The Superfluous Man

By Silas Nyanchwani

5.”The Superfluous Man”
This is yet the most important chapter in Walter Trobisch ‘s book, “The Misunderstood Man”
The chapter focuses on the emptiness men feel in their relationship with women especially in marriage after kids pop up.
After the wife gives birth, the man’s role becomes peripheral, after a fashion.

When a man becomes a father, he enters an existential crisis. He feels Superfluous and unnecessary. And sometimes like a pain in the neck.
The joy of the wife becoming pregnant, soon evaporates as the man quickly becomes a spectator. It is a painful reminder that he will never carry the unborn baby(at least until technology takes this evolutionary or divine duty from humans it remains so.

During birth, the wife is assisted by the medical team and sometimes men are not even in theatre. Once he has fulfilled his biological duty, he is no longer needed.

After birth, the child depends on the mother in their first years of nourishment. Again, he watches from the sidelines, helpless. Even the nurturing and catering to the child’s need is instinctively not wired to men.
A father is mostly needed when kids become teenagers and here he is given an antagonistic role, where he has to play the bad cop, which sometimes may not endear him to the children.

As divorce numbers go up and mothers more than ever before lock father’s out of their children’s life, men may even feel more and more displaced.

That is why men lately complain that they hate being seen as ATMs and want their humanity acknowledged. They are making this request at at a time when some women can’t see a man’s humanity if he is not rich.
The superfluous feeling leads to a very frustrated man.
Tomorrow, we focus on the “Frustrated Man”.