I’m doing a man cleanse.
I think it is what it sounds like – choosing to not date, to interact with male friends as little as possible, in order to cleanse myself of their energy, and get back to knowing who I am, without their influence. They are not the problem, it is just a time for me to turn inward and cultivate my female relationships.
Why I Do It
First of all, I’m not out here to tell anyone that they should do this. Nobody told me. After over 20 years of never being (truly) alone, it came to me. I needed this. If you’re reading this, this idea came to you too.
I’m a mature dater. Post divorce. I mention this for context. This means I’m not looking for a soul mate or someone to make a family with. Just someone normal for company. Sounded simple enough, right? 🙂
When I did start dating after divorce, I took frequent breaks, because who can do online dating for long. But this is different. Before I would get off the app for some time, but somehow I often ended up meeting someone, or was seeing someone casually, so even though I didn’t have a boyfriend, I wasn’t truly alone. A man cleanse is different. I am alone. I don’t maintain text flirtations. I had a male friend who kept trying to create a grey area between us (despite me being very clear that I was not interested in anything other than friendship) and in the man cleanse, there is no room for him and his weird energy. I don’t think it’s necessary to cut off all communication with male friends, but I chose to minimize all mine. I noticed that there was an air of “possibility” or gendered charge with each of my male friends (other than work ones), and in my man cleanse state, I didn’t want to waste energy on that. Because the man cleanse is not about men. It is about me. The emotional energy I spend, I spend on me. On my growth. On tuning into myself and feeling my needs. On processing my hurts. On noticing the obligations I feel and choosing whether to entertain them or drop them.
At first I gave myself two months. Then I asked myself if it feels like the right time to re-engage with the male sex. Not date, but just interact. I chose to give myself another month. Now it’s been five.
What I Got Out of It
This time has given me time to process my relationships and also to strengthen my female network. When I came out of my long term marriage, like many parents with little kids, I found myself without any friends. I wanted to have friends again and it’s a little harder to do that as an adult. I found it a little easier to make friends with men and the men I dated usually became one of my closest friends. It’s great to date someone you’re actually friends with. Except for this fatal flaw – whenever you break up, you lose the romantic interest and your closest friend. I had to stop doing this to myself. It was time to make my female acquaintances into friends. To put the effort I previously put into male interactions (with 2 kids, a job and a mortgage, I don’t have a lot of spare time and energy in a week) into my girls. I did, and I feel like I finally have a small network to lean on.
More importantly, I strengthened my relationship with myself. I never lived alone before. After my divorce, I wasn’t in serious relationships, but I seemed to fall into some kind of regular interaction with men very quickly, so I usually felt like when life wasn’t going well, there was at least someone who could provide a short happiness boost, a distraction. I wanted to change that. I wanted to be ok being completely on my own. To face my loneliness, my shortcomings. You really can’t do that when you have the security blanket of someone you know likes you and will come to see you when you feel lonely, someone you can call to help you when you get a flat tire at night, someone you can booty call. I now feel very strong by myself. I’m still in the rebellious stage where I don’t know if I can let any man ever try to clip my wings. And I like it. When I started I wanted to process my emotional baggage so I would be ready for a healthy relationship with a man in the future. Then my objective changed to having a good relationship with myself. And that is the best thing I could have done for myself.
Ending It
A single friend told me that during her thirties she enjoyed her women friends a lot and had a lot of fun with them and didn’t date for a decade. I know that would be too long for me. Honestly, I don’t know when to end this. There are things I miss…. Not the dating, and not the relationship, because I’m finally okay being by myself, giving myself the support I need. I guess there is just one thing I miss. But I still don’t want to become entangled emotionally with a man, so I’m not making the decision to stop the cleanse yet. I know that trusting men is really about trusting myself not to over commit or compromise my needs in order to give them what they need… I guess I have some work to do on myself still.
-Nik
