5. Quit demeaning men.
At the height of the “Women’s Movement”, there was a joke circulating around, attributed toGloria Steinem.: “A woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle.”
The sentiment may have been that women need to learn to stand on their own feet and take care of themselves. They have to stop making their identity dependent on having a man in their lives.
But the impact on men was devastating. If I am as irrelevant to my woman as a bicycle is to a fish, then why stay? Most men have a strong desire to protect and serve a woman.
However, if we are not needed or wanted, or if our offers of support are seen as a big joke, well… “Screw you,” we say to ourselves. Our shame and rage are then expressed in our cheating.
Few women consciously shame or demean the men in their lives. I’ve found that this most often happens when women are afraid. It’s a vicious cycle. If a woman feels that she can’t trust the man to be there for her, she distances herself a little bit.
The man, feeling her distance, becomes irritable and angry. The woman, feeling the brunt of his anger, becomes even more afraid that he’ll leave. The result is that we create the very thing we are most afraid of.
Women are constantly telling me that they want their man to open up to her, to share his true feelings. However, what I’ve found (and many men have told me), when we do open up and share our feelings, the woman often rejects us.
Usually when they say they want to know how we feel, they mean “I want you to shower me with love and affection.” When they hear how angry, hurt, and frightened we are, they often run and hide.
Brady had a professor in graduate school, a wise woman who understood these things. She told the women in her class, “Ladies,if you want your partners to be emotionally available to you, you can’t cut their balls off every time they show some vulnerability.”
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