As a psychotherapist, the most common complaint I hear from men who are partnered is that their wives/partners are unceasingly critical of them. Men talk about never being able to get it right and not understanding what the rules are, or if there even are any rules. Men tend to approach this problem somewhat concretely, working stubbornly to understand what they’re doing wrong so they can prevent further disapproval. At the same time, most men do have some understanding that their wives’/partners’ are not primarily dissatisfied with their behavior but with their being inattentive, and being emotionally insensitive.
Stereotypically, when a man’s wife/partner is upset with him, it is referred to as “being in the doghouse.”
The punishment for men’s transgressions most often consists of women withholding attention and affection, emotional withdrawal, “giving him the cold shoulder,” both because that’s most often the only power women have in heterosexual relationships and because women understand how vulnerable their male partners are to any threat of emotional abandonment.
The doghouse is about much more than just withholding sex, although one stereotypical punishment is getting sent to sleep on the couch. It’s about withholding attention, validation, conversation, and connection; all the things that men would probably not even know they need until their wives/partners withhold them.
This dynamic is a rebalancing of power in the relationship, with women using the only means available, a passive punishing withholding, to reassert whatever small share of power they have in the relationship. There is typically no meaningful conversation or attempt to work things through. The man is simply punished until his wife is ready to end the punishment. He is, of course, always vulnerable to being sent back to the doghouse.
Retailer JC Penny released an advertisement called “The doghouse” which cautions men against buying the wrong gifts for their wives. In the ad, a man offends his wife by giving her an expensive vacuum cleaner for their anniversary. She marches him outside to a doghouse and instructs him to” get inside.” The man enters and falls into a purgatory in which a group of men is perpetually folding laundry. The man protests that “I don’t deserve to be here. I didn’t do anything,” and another man tells him that
“Every man in the doghouse thinks he’s innocent.” This ad was viewed 1.7 million times in the first three weeks.
Since men superficially misunderstand conflict with their wives/partners as a behavioral problem, they tend to seek behavioral solutions, typically, an apology. Apologies are not generally effective relationship repair, because they are most often a thinly veiled attempt to prematurely bring the argument to a close and restore the status quo without ever giving a full hearing to their wives/partners feelings.
On the other hand, if men understood conflict with their wives/partners as a problem in the relationship rather than their own individual failing, they would have a much better chance of understanding what they need to do to repair a relationship. For more mutually satisfying conflict resolution, I suggest that men start with a 30-day apology moratorium. Begin by not apologizing for anything for 30 days, it may help you to listen more. Listening more will set the stage for the four steps outlined below to help you and your partner feel more confident about handling conflict in your relationship.
- When your wife/partner is hurt, the first thing she needs to know is that you understand how she feels, on her terms, not yours. This is not just a matter of repeating back to her what she said. Men sometimes get angry and frustrated when parroting back their wives’/partners’ words doesn’t smooth things over, complaining “but I am listening to you!” One of the biggest mistakes men make in relationships is stopping there. Nobody feels heard or knows that you care if you just repeat back what they said. You have to also listen between the lines, use your intuition to go beyond the concrete words and get the deeper sense of what she is talking about.
- The second and more important step, and the one that people sadly often leave out is to take responsibility for the impact of your behavior. This does not mean saying you were wrong. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s about acknowledging that you understand how your behavior has impacted someone you love. Whether or not you meant to hurt her is largely irrelevant, and falling back on that is just a way to dodge acknowledging that you hurt someone.
- Your partner needs to know that hurting her matters to you, that you have some personal reaction to her being hurt, and that it has some impact on you. You have to be willing to put a little skin in the game, dig a little deeper in yourself and share with her some of how you are feeling in response to her feelings. This is what empathy is.
- Lastly, you have to be willing to give her some realistic indication of what you are willing to do to decrease the likelihood of hurting her in this way in the future. Don’t promise you won’t do it again because you almost certainly well. Most of the significant hurts in couples come from people acting out their own deeply ingrained characterological patterns. Much as you might try, it is highly unlikely that you are going to be able to change that overnight. It’s not a measure of how much you care about someone, but of how deeply ingrained these patterns are. The fact is that we actually unconsciously choose a mater precisely because s/he is likely to play out these exact same patterns that are so hurtful to us, but that’s a matter for another column.
What you can offer is some realistic understanding of where this behavior is coming from for you, and what kind of internal work you are willing to do to be more understanding and more sensitive to the impact of your behavior on her.
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