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August
Do Men Need to Be More Like Women?
Lately I’ve been thinking about how men
approach marriages. Once the courting phase is over
and the marriage has settled down (within the first
1-3 years), we may become pretty passive about our
marriages. We do “care”; it’s just
that we want our marriages to work without having
to think much about them. We want our woman there,
ready and willing to love us, nurture us, and have
sex with us (not necessarily in that order). But we
don’t want to do a lot of maintenance on the
relationship.
In fact, a man can go for weeks without giving
much thought to his marriage, once he thinks
it’s up and running. He wants it to function
like a refrigerator, to run well for a long, long
time so he can forget about it while still enjoying
its benefits. Like marriage, a refrigerator is
important and necessary, but once it’s up and
running he figures it shouldn’t need much
attention. It may get too cold at time and then
he’ll try to fix it. And occasionally the
light may go out and he may pay attention then,
too. But he is going to be most interested only if
the power goes out altogether.
Similarly, a man is likely to figure that his
marriage is doing fine unless his wife tells him it
isn’t, especially when she begins to send the
message that she’s about to leave him.
It’s not that he doesn’t care about his
mate; he wants to enjoy being with her. It’s
just that he’d rather put his focus on his
work or sports or other things about which he knows
something and feels competent to perform and
succeed.
If we men want better relationships with our
women, we have to be willing to commit our energy,
hearts and mind. Letting a marriage run on
automatic doesn’t cut it any more, because
most women won’t allow it. Besides, those
kinds of marriages are no fun; they’re easier
in some ways, but they are much more boring!
Anyway, I think about all this when men tell me
that their wives/girlfriends are constantly bugging
them to talk about what they feel and be more in
touch with their feelings. (Their women usually end
up telling them what they must be feeling, and that
makes them even more angry and defensive.) What can
a man do to turn this situation around?
Here’s the answer: we have to be willing to
take total responsibility for what we feel and what
we say and do in our marriages, and we must learn
to become comfortable and proficient in the way we
express ourselves. When a man takes complete
responsibility for exploring and expressing his
inner life he’ll get his power back, and he
won’t care whether he satisfies his
wife’s yardstick for being in touch with his
feelings.
Men have evolved differently than women; over
tens of thousands of years we learned to gaze
outward to conquer, defend, hunt, create, and
build. Women, on the other hand, learned to care
for families, children, emotions, and the entire
“unseen” realm. We all know that this is
changing for both sexes; women are moving into
traditionally male areas and vice versa. But it
will take a long, long, time before our biology
adapts to allow all men easy access to their
emotions and to commune with others as well.
Our society has recently created a crazy idea:
men should be like women in the way we listen, talk
and feel and we should deal with relationships like
women do; we should listen with tremendous empathy,
strive for harmony, and speak fluidly about our
feelings. This is patently absurd, and if a man
buys into this idea he will constantly feel like a
failure. If you observe how men communicate you
will see instances of different communication
style, not necessarily a worse communication style.
(See Deborah
Tannen’s work for research about
this.)
My advice to men is this: talk about your life
the most openly and honestly you can. Your wife
deserves your commitment to intimate communication.
But she doesn’t have a right to expect you to
communicate in the same manner as women. If she
wants that kind of communication, she should talk
to other women.
If you take on the challenge of becoming
familiar with your inner life, you will learn more
about your feelings and how to talk about them and
you’ll be a much happier person.
Self-knowledge is power, and you’ll be
stronger without having to keep up the
“armor” that so many men set up to
protect themselves. But, forget about communicating
better to please a woman, because that will only
weaken you. It’s not about communicating like
a woman; it’s about communicating like a full
human being.
©2008, Marty
Friedman
* * *
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is
threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people
together through the years. - Simone Signoret
Martin
G. Friedman is the author of “Straight
Talk for Men About Marriage—What Men Need to
Know About Marriage (And What Women Need to Know
About Men)”. For
many years, Marty Friedman taught corporate
managers how to create good relationships at work
before tackling male/female relationship
issues--and applying what he learned to his own
marriage. The founder of Men in Marriage, Marty is
regularly interviewed on radio and television, and
talks to organizations and individuals from a
unique, inspirational and humorous perspective.
Find out more at www.meninmarriage.com
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