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Relationships
Communications
Men Are Human Too
To hear many relationship "experts" tell it, men
are still stuck in primitive, caveman mentality. These experts admonish
women to be passive and play hard to get. Why? Because, in order for a woman to
interest them, they claim that men need to be on the hunt. If men aren't made to
feel the need to pursue and capture they won't feel sufficiently masculine and
driven to conquer and protect the woman who excites these primitive urges.
But these experts never say how true love and
real romance are created and kept alive once the marriage vows have
been taken. What does a man do with pursuit and capture once the pursuit is over
and the capture is complete? Instead these "experts" teach that the best a
woman can expect from her man is a form of role playing and, at best,
compromise.
Tough guy no longer
While this may still be the case for some men who were raised by brutish
fathers and needy mothers, our experience over the past eighteen years suggests
just the opposite. We've spent a lot of time counseling couples of all ages,
giving relationship workshops of all kinds, and running dozens of gender
reconciliation seminars privately and for corporations. When given a
safe environment to express themselves, men have voiced, over and over, their
objection to being boxed into the old tough-guy stereotype. They
express how burdened they feel by their wives and girlfriends who expect them to
always be in charge.
And these men, from all walks of life, repeatedly ask that women take a more
active and responsible role during dating and marriage.
As one man said to a large group in Melbourne, Australia, "Women
expect me to read their minds. But I can't. Yet I'm
made wrong if I ask for their input." Many men in the audience laughed in
recognition and applauded their compatriot's honesty, while numerous women
giggled in guilty acknowledgment. In Detroit, a lighting technician for a
television interview we did shared a recent experience he had had with his wife.
"She's always saying she wants me to be more emotional. But then when I told her
I was feeling anxious that I might lose my job, she told me she didn't want to
hear about it, that I should just deal with it and not upset her."
Yes, men are fearful of women
The fact is that men are human too. They feel
deeply, they care passionately, and they want to be respected, and
loved. And, as so many men have shared with us, they become
self-conscious and fearful of opening themselves and expressing their truth if
they're not sure women will acknowledge and respect them for their full range
and depth of human experience.
You see, men are eager to share themselves with women, but only when
they can feel safe that their inner reality will be valued and treated
with care. Otherwise, yes, men will retreat from the threat of women's contempt
or rejection. But otherwise, men want very much to have adult-to-adult
relationships with women rather than acting out the pretense of Knight
in Shining Armor with the Damsel in Distress who needs to be rescued from danger
in order to feel loved and made whole.
But the roles that men have been expected to play have been very
limited. Only recently have men been allowed to participate in the
births of their children. Only recently have men been able to make the choice to
be house-husbands, staying home to care for the children while their more
ambitious wives go to work—without becoming the butt of jokes and mocked by
friends. And only recently have men begun to actively participate in planning
their own weddings.
When he’s only an onlooker
Think about it. Women want active marriage partners, yet they've
traditionally left their fiances in the dark while they went off with
their mothers to plan every last detail of the wedding, reception, and often the
honeymoon. What happened to the strong, brave knight? He's been reduced
to an onlooker who's often cast out of the wedding planning entirely by
the mother of his bride. So where would this husband-to-be learn that his input,
his expertise, his participation is wanted and needed by the woman who says she
loves and needs him?
No surprise then that so many men start off their marriages feeling
like accessories, not nearly what their new wives had in mind. They
learned their sideline role very well. So when they retreat to their computer,
the newspaper, or Monday Night Football, they are only continuing to leave all
the action and responsibility to their wives just as they learned during the
wedding preparation process.
The magic of our differences
We'd all prefer, men and women alike, to be
respected and valued for who we really are, free from the old
limitations and role-playing. And that's happening more and more as men and
women open themselves to bridge the age-old divide between them. We call it the
magic of differences, made possible by genuine curiosity and sincere listening
to know the human truth beyond the old clichés about "all any woman wants is .
. .", and "that's how men are". |
