Do some women who encourage men to be more emotional and engaged, end up losing respect for the men who do so?
Late last night, I followed a series of tweets by GMP Editor Joanna Schroeder who was in a conversation with@hugoschwyzer @TMatlack @jeremyadamsmith, triggered in part by an article Tom Matlack posted titled Are Men Needy? No, Men are Good and Hugo Schwyzer’s The Rise of the Needy Man.
But its these specific tweets that caught my eye:
(Non-Tweet transaltion: “I’m having a hard time formulating all my issues here. It boggles my mind that we’ve been asking [men] to be more emotional and engaged, and when they become emotional and engaged we say, “That’s too much!” I mean, talk about expecting perfection. Life is growth and effort.”)
I went to sleep thinking about a question which haunts me on an ongoing basis. For all of us. Culturally. And that question is: Do some women who encourage men, as Joanna says, to “be more emotional and engaged” end up losing respect for the men who do so?
I admit it could take a decade or two to unpack all the implications of the phrase “be more emotional and engaged”. This request by women to men covers a vast range of relational, emotional, and functional markers. It means very different things to different people. I take it to mean, at its base, that men are 1) being asked to increase emotional communication and 2) address basic issues of fairness in how gender roles in households are organized. If the stereotypical 1950′s dad worked his job and did little to help raise the kids or clean the house, the modern man is asked to be much more engaged, and in some cases to take over the home and child rearing while wives pursue their careers.
What percentage of women are actually asking some variation on this of their men? Is this request coming out of feminist quarters, or is it a function of the breakdown of gender silos, or what exactly? They’re good questions, but regardless of the answers, I think we can all agree the trend is out there.
So, if I ended my day thinking about the conversation between Joanna, Hugo, Tom and Jeremy, I ran smack into the other bookend this morning—a book review by Liz Mundy of the San Francisco Chronicle. She is reviewing a novel by British author Rachel Cusk titled Aftermath: On Marriage and Seperation.
Mundy writes:
Not long ago, in an online blog of the Wall Street Journal, a wife made a confession. A high-earning editor and the breadwinner in her family, she admitted that she resents her husband for being supportive and domestically hands-on. Far from being grateful that he makes her job and family life possible by taking on the role of primary caregiver to their son, she feels burdened and jealous. While some of her objections are fair – supporting a household is scary, as men have long known – others, she acknowledged, aren’t.
Her piece is a reminder that women, like men, can be emotionally retrograde even as they are progressive and ambitious; it’s not always men who have trouble adapting to female achievement and female earning.
The same dynamic is at work in “Aftermath,” Rachel Cusk’s bleak and rather bravely unsympathetic memoir of marital dissolution. Cusk, a British novelist, sketches a scenario whereby she maneuvered her husband into the role of househusband, then scorned him for occupying it. She is not sure whom to blame for this radical inconsistency: her feminism, her parents, her schooling, or simply whatever was in the water when she was growing up.
It got me thinking, maybe this whole gender role adjustment thing is a hell of a lot harder than we know. Because it’s not just about men taking on new roles and ways of being, its about women and men unpacking the very real and conflicted emotions the reality of this can create. Its fine for a woman to wish for a husband who will stay home with the kids a support her career. But what if that woman then wakes up one morning resenting her husband for it? Now imagine how he feels.
Is there some vast emotional and sexual landscape that exists in direct conflict with the modern women’s request for men to “be more emotional and engaged?” Do some women struggle with what Mundy calls the emotionally retrograde side; yearning for a more traditional man even as they seek an egalitarian marriage?
It’s a question that begs a larger conversation.
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More by Mark Greene: 6 Reasons “Why Women Aren’t Crazy” is Only Part of the Story.
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There are many opportunities available to create the type of changes in society that would benefit both men and women. One thing seems clear, unilateral approaches, like that of feminism, don’t work. Their approach is reliant upon exascerbating divisions based on the selective condemnation of gender bias. What one side of the gender coin does impacts the other, for better or worse. In the new world where the unpredictably work and career are increasingly defining both men and women, flexilibilty of identity and role are essential.
@ ccd: I think the point you raise cuts to the core of the primary problem men have with feminism; it’s lack of consistency and habit of ignoring blatant double standards on myriad issues relative to role changes and equality. Feminism”s lack of commitment to being held accountable for these mistakes is part of the problem.
It is devastating to tell one’s husband he should be the SAHD only to later discover that because he did exactly what you asked of him, to make this great sacrifice, that he is no longer attractive to you. All men want to know is what are the new rules and once they have been agreed upon that there will be accountability and ownership. Throwing ones hands up and saying, ” BUT I DIDN’T KNOW!” isn’t enough. If one claims to be a leader and then sets an agenda FOR CULTURE THAT LEADS TO MORE PROBLEMS, they should be held accountable. This, in turn, earns respect
One big question is, SO WHAT if that woman loses respect for you when you show your true self? If she asked for you to reveal your true self and you do and she doesn’t like it, then ultimately you are much better off without her. Her respect for you isn’t really respect for you if it’s based on an illusion that you’re maintaining. No man should feel like he has to keep a woman’s respect at all costs, especially if the cost is playing a role that’s not true to who you are.
On some level, it may not even matter WHY her feelings have changed or whether she’s being fair or not, or consistent or not. At the end of the day, someone else’s disillusionment is their problem, not yours.
If she makes a request for you to more of a certain way, and you like it and she regrets it, then she has to deal with that. Maybe she should go off and deal with that somewhere else? It’s possible that her temporary loss of respect for you is simply one of the prices you have to pay for living an authentic life.
While I agree with you in spirit this is still something that is worth discussing. We often talk about how men are having trouble adjusting to a world where gender roles are no longer the same. But much less talked about is the reaction some women have when men try to be “modern men”. They often find themselves wanting someone more traditionally masculine, leaving men in an odd position.
Yep.
How do you have a relationship with someone who isn’t emotional and engaged?
I would suggest that my mother’s generation did it more often than not. In some cases it was the woman who was not emotionally engaged, in some cases the man. Men often cheated. Women withheld. Go back before birth control or further. Generational patterns were set that are still playing out.