Men’s Experience of Masculinity in Marriage: A Phenomenological Investigation and Depth Psychological Analysis

Nisenbaum, J. (2008). Men’s Experience of Masculinity in Marriage: A Phenomenological Investigation and Depth Psychological Analysis (Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2008).

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on the investigation of men’s lived experience of masculinity in marriage. Here, masculinity is understood as the inner experience of being a man, whether it conforms or not with cultural stereotypes of masculinity.


Descriptions of lived experience were gathered in semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with a convenience sample of eight men, ages 31-49, and married for at least three years, with no children. A phenomenological method of data analysis yielded seven major themes that encompassed descriptions of (a) men’s relationship to what was referred to in this study as the received model of masculinity (two themes); (b) the experience of a dynamic conflict among personal, marital, and sociocultural and political roles, values, beliefs, attributes, behaviors, and stereotypes of masculinity; (c) the activation of internal states that support or maintain, challenge, restore, and undermine men’s sense of masculinity; (d) the experience of marriage providing a container for the development towards a more complex, rich, and expansive sense of masculinity; (e) the sense that men’s experience of masculinity changes overtime; and (f) the experience of men evaluating their sense of masculinity based on everyday events and interactions with their wives.


These themes were further organized and discussed from a depth psychological perspective using a developmental framework. This analysis exposed the deeper psychological meanings of the participants’ experiences and revealed that marriage propelled the participants into a process of deepening their search for their authentic sense of masculinity. Clinical implications of these findings are explored and discussed.