“I think he had a beautiful balance, between strength and softness, his vulnerability and then his pure strength.” ~ Demi Moore, remembering Patrick Swayze ~
Patrick Swayze died on Sept. 14, 2009, 20 months after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Moore, his co-star in the 1990 blockbuster “Ghost,” described Swayze during an interview for the 2019 documentary, “I am Patrick Swayze.”
Like I wrote in Sunday’s piece, according to professional dance instructors, mastering balance is one of the three core challenges couples face when learning to dance together.
Men should pay heed to Swayze’s beautiful balance as they explore their masculinity, sex, and being sensual, because research suggests women are most drawn to competent and caring men who pair confident agency with warm responsiveness.
Men who cultivate this balance report better sexual satisfaction, likely because emotional intelligence and secure attachment make emotional intimacy — and sex — feel safer and hotter for them too.
Yes, effects vary by culture and context. But the center of gravity for heterosexual relationships over the last 20 years favors balanced agency and responsiveness over either extreme of the male sexual spectrum.
Conversely, shunning labels that restrict you from becoming the fullest person you can be is another lesson we can learn from this enigma of a man who tried to pursue masculinity and happiness on his terms.
The cowboy in ballet shoes
From the time he was a small boy growing up outside Houston, Swayze was on a path to becoming different than most men. His father, a rough and tumble cowboy, married a ballet dancer and instructor who owned her own studio.
His mother had him in ballet slippers when he was still a small boy, and it was here that Swayze realized his sexual identity — as defined by American society — was being pulled in two opposite directions.
In a 1988 interview with Barbara Walters, Swayze described how his father “was real scared” of his son’s ballet dancing. He was worried his son “would turn gay… because, you know, he was a Texas cowboy. Part of him didn’t understand this stuff.”
Swayze excelled at everything he did — from football to track, to gymnastics; and as a classically trained dancer. His male school mates did not understand these two sides of the same young man.
“Well, when you’re living in Texas... and the other kids are going off, you know, to play… football… baseball… and you’ve got your ballet shoes and your tights… I got beat up over and over and over again when I was little, and that wasn’t too good.”
As a result, Swayze said, “one way or another, I’ve spent my life proving [I] was a real Texas kid.”
This boy’s got game
Regularly in close contact with girls in form-fitting tights helped bring out Swayze’s youthful libido. When Lisa Niemi joined Swayze’s mother’s dance studio, the rumor was that the instructor’s son was a Casanova. But despite being blessed with good looks, athleticism and charm, Swayze still struggled with self-doubt.
In one interview, Swayze found a link between Johnny Castle’s attraction to “Baby” in “Dirty Dancing” and his own experience falling in love with Lisa — the woman who would one day become his wife.
“I had been meeting girls with names like Mimi and Angel. Then I fell in love with Lisa, my wife, and for a long time didn’t feel like I deserved her.
That’s kind of how Johnny felt with Baby: ‘She so outclasses me, how dare [I think] she might love me?’ I think I accidentally keyed into something that so many guys feel.”
Swayze took his insecurity of what it means to be a man to New York City where he pursued becoming a professional dancer at 20 years old. He described himself as walking around “with a chip” on his shoulder.
“I’m a ballet dancer. What of it?” was the way he described his attitude in one interview.
“I’m a macho ballet dancer. I’m not like the rest of you.”
The façade didn’t make him happy.
“I woke up one day and realized… that I was becoming the very thing I hated.”
Reckoning with himself
Swayze’s saving grace was mindfulness, the ability to be introspective enough to examine his fears, and try to regulate them.
“I was scared to look inside for fear that I wouldn’t find anything… that… my fears would be proven right.”
Starring as John Travolta’s replacement in the Broadway production of “Grease” helped launch the actor in Hollywood; that and an old high school football leg injury that derailed his professional dancing career.
His entrée into teen idol status was propelled by his 1979 role as a champion skate dancer in “Skate Town USA.”
Speaking to Barbara Walters, Swayze spoke about how after that movie “teen magazines were jumping in my face, and I had a four-picture deal offered, and six other films.”
But Swayze knew he had more inside him.
“I hadn’t been studying all my life to throw it down the drain by becoming a face. The very thing I was scared I was anyway. A face and a tight pair of jeans.
“I was willing to bank on… that with enough study and enough growth and enough you know connection with myself… and the truth in me, that I could become an actor to be reckoned with and an actor with respect.”
Reading for the role of Johnny in “Dirty Dancing” helped him draw closer to that truth.
“I felt something for Johnny. A guy from the streets that is fighting to like himself, to believe in himself, to believe he could be something more than what society will allow him to.”
During that interview, Swayze’s internal masculine war — the one that instructs men to suppress our vulnerability — bubbled up when Walters asked him about how he felt about his father dying before Swayze’s acting career took off.
“Everything he wanted for me. Everything he dreamed about. Now he never got to know.”
When Walters asked Swayze if he thought his father would be proud of him, he started to cry, dabbed his eyes with his fingers, and turned his face away from the camera.
“Oh Jesus... Well, that was his problem. He thought crying was weak.”
Despite his success, Swayze’s pursuit of balance wouldn’t allow him to settle for being just another pretty face.
“I reevaluated my career out of internal need as opposed to career need because, you’re right, after “Ghost,” I had tons and tons of offers coming in and all different kinds of films, but I was having a very, very difficult time finding anything that matched up with what my insides were telling me to do.”
The type of role he was looking for finally appeared when he auditioned for Max Lowe in the 1992 film City of Joy.
Lowe is a Houston-based surgeon who quits his practice and ends up in the slums of Calcutta after being beaten and robbed. As Max waits for his passport to be replaced, he practices medicine for a clinic serving lepers and the city’s poor.
Director Roland Joffe described Swayze’s intense pursuit of an authentic portrayal of Max Lowe this way:
“This was somebody searching for a way of escaping being what everybody was telling him he wanted to be… and he was struggling to find the him inside that.”
This is why I have a problem with all of these men writing books prescribing for men what being a man should look like. There is no universal template for “a man to be a man.”
To successfully navigate between what’s on our insides and what the outside wants us to be simply requires being introspective — and kind to ourselves.
Looking for a regular guy
Patrick Swayze was an imperfect man. Not that there is anything wrong with that. In fact, there is everything right with acknowledging it. Maybe it’s more accurate to call Swayze a perfectly imperfect human.
Swayze didn’t need to deny the possibility of the fullness of what a man can be —vulnerable, soft, strong, athletic, handsome. All of it. Not some of it at the expense of other parts of it.
And women found his balance desirable, sexual, sensuous. Millions swooned over him, whether they knew him personally or from a distance.
In a March 5, 2005, interview with the American Film Institute, Swayze described the success of “Dirty Dancing” like this:
“It’s not about the sensuality. It’s really about people trying to find themselves. This young dance instructor feeling like he’s nothing but a product, and this young girl trying to find out who she is in a society of restrictions...”
Your brain is your greatest sex organ. It’s where your sensuality and sexuality resides, alongside your deepest beliefs about yourself, your repressions, inhibitions — your memories of lovers past and present.
They all inhabit this mysterious cluster of gray matter, emerging in and out of your consciousness, sometimes when you attempt to call on them. More often than not, when they call on you.
Trying to be more conscious of this neural call and response can make you more emotionally receptive — attuned, validating — increasing your sexual desire and that of the women we love.
That’s the “softness” side of Swayze that he seemed to have worked on so skillfully.
He didn’t need to exercise his more traditionally masculine traits to dominate women and get them into bed. In fact, he and his wife Lisa worked on their marriage monogamously for 35 years.
Male coercive dominance tracks with worse relationship happiness, according to many studies, while kindness relates more positively to attractiveness. A confident and prosocial man beats a domineering one any day of the week.
And men with a higher emotional intelligence tend to exhibit greater sexual satisfaction — partly due to how this trait lowers attachment avoidance (anxiety) while also opening a man up to feeling more emotions more strongly.
Simply stated, being more comfortable with intimacy and touch creates more healthy sexual exchanges.
“When I think of Patrick, I think of gentility,” Demi Moore said. “He was just this very sweet, like a regular guy, this quiet, almost very mild-mannered person. It’s the contradiction of this extremely dynamic, physical person.”
When will we truly normalize this definition of a man? — “a regular guy” trying to blend his unique combination of strength, wisdom, compassion, softness.
A man who is peacefully exploring the question, “Am I enough?” And no matter the answer, he remains committed to continuously trying to master his balance.
