Why Won’t Guys Grow Up?
Posted on 08 October 2008 by cory
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Michael Kimmel is a professor of gender studies, specializing in men’s issues. His new book, Guyland, explores the emergence of a new developmental stage in men’s lives.
Cory: Tell me about your work and how you decided to write Guyland.
MK: I started writing Guyland because there was something going in this new developmental stage between adolescence. People are getting married 6 or 7 years later than they were 50 years ago. So, what are people doing in that time?
I began to talk to my students. They seemed to be drifting. They seemed to be delaying the ability to have a plan for their lives, to know what they were going to be like. How they were planning to be the husbands and fathers they were trying to be. I wrote this book to try to explain this world they live in, why Guyland has emerged…and how to navigate this world and be the kind of adult that [they] say [they] want to be.
Cory: So you’re saying you’re hoping to create a dialogue among guys about how to use this time to prepare?
MK: Right, how to navigate this developmental stage more consciously and more ethically.
Cory: You’re not advocating getting rid of this developmental stage or going back to a time when people got married earlier?
MK: Absolutely not. This developmental stage is here to stay. Many guys that I talked to are saying things like, “What’s the rush? Why do I have to commit to a relationship and then be married to someone for 70 years? Give me a break!” Other guys are saying, “That world where you retire at age 65 and you get a gold watch, that world is gone. Corporations aren’t nearly so loyal.” What happens is that guys are taking more time to commit to careers, more time to commit to relationships. I don’t put any value judgement on that. What I think is that’s the world we live in, so are we going to make that a time of drift, or are we going to make it a time when people engage ethically in these issues at this time in their lives?
Cory: So, what led you to be interested in this subject in the first place?
MK: Observing college kids. Having a 9 year old son, watching him at the very beginning start to think about what masculinity means, what it means to be a guy, what guys are like and the differences between guys and girls. Most of my scholarship has been on the evolving and changing definitions of masculinity in America, in response, in part to the changes in women’s lives. And I think that the most important component to this. In the past 30 - 40 years women’s lives have changed so dramatically that it has left a lot of men confused about their own world. If women are our equals on the athletic field, in the corporate boardroom, in the operating room in the hospital, what’s distinctive, what is there that makes us feel like men?
Cory: You’re saying that because of women’s rights coming to the forefront, men are becoming confused about their own role in society?
MK: I think some are confused. I think some have become angry, defensive. I think there is an edge to a lot of Guyland. I get a lot of, where can a guy go to just be a jerk? We can’t say disgusting things about girls anymore. Y’know, where can a guy go to just be a guy? To just be alone with other guys and just be as jerky as he wants to be? They feel like there’s no place any longer that’s just for them.
Cory: Would you say that guys in Guyland are happy?
MK: I wouldn’t. They spend a lot of time being drunk and sloppy and proclaiming how happy they are. If guys are truly honest about it, they are not thrilled about all the sorts of things that go on and that they have to participate in - all the drunken revels, the binging, the hazing, the hooking up. I mean, it leaves you feeling kind’ve empty the next morning. How does a guy get a map to leave this place of being so excitedly entertained all the time with every new video game, CD, movie, all the entertainment that is constantly swirling around? How do you navigate your world, your way through this place, and that’s why I wrote the book.
Cory: If you could sum up how a guy gets a map out of Guyland, what would say that is?
MK: Most guys drift out. Five or six guys from the same fraternity will rent a house. Eventually around 27 or 28 they will start to drift away. One guy will get a job where he has to get up at 7:00 in the morning, so he can’t go out binge drinking every night. Another guy will get serious with his girlfriend, they’ll move in together. Another guy will say he’s going to go back to law school so he has to study real hard. Gradually they drift away. Most guys eventually get through this, but they don’t get through it unscarred and they don’t really develop a good life plan for their careers or for being the good fathers we want them to be.
They want to be good fathers, by the way.
The second part is, they do it with some help. They need the support network. One of the things I talk about in this book is how to develop the really good male friend. Finding one other guy with whom you can share your feelings without the sort of mask and bravado that you always have to have out in public. Remembering your parents, keeping them involved in your lives. Remembering to maintain those relationships.
The final thing, and I think this is really important, is to listen to their own hearts. In the name of masculinity, we guys are often asked to go along with really stupid stuff. Guys who are making cat calls on the street and we are sort of shuffling off, hoping she doesn’t see you, all the kind of stupid stuff that we are asked to put up with all the time. You know you don’t’ feel very comfortable with it, you laughed when I said it.
The other night I was reading the very first Harry Potter book to my 9 year old son and at the very end of that book Professor Dumbledore says it takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies. It takes even more to stand up to your friends. That’s what I think guys need to do as well, and they need to look inside themselves at their own sense of right and wrong and stop being bystanders because it’s just easier because they’ll pick on you instead, and do the right thing.
Cory: Who inspired you to go into this kind of work and research?
MK: Feminist women. That’s the easiest answer. I started my graduate work doing 17th century French history and I got turned around to thinking about male/female relationship. At the time in graduate school feminism was exploding all around me. Women in my life kept saying you’ve got to write about this, think about this in your own life. I changed the course of my life and eventually taught the very first course in the state of New Jersey on men and masculinity. I’ve started, with other people, a sub-field of gender studies on masculinity, and that’s been the subject I’ve become an expert on the past 20 years or so.
Cory: I took a gender studies course in college. One professor talked about male issues and it was really interesting.
MK: Was that professor male or female?
Cory: Female
MK: Most of the people who are interested in gender are women.
Cory: Most sociologists who study gender are women?
MK: Most people who think about gender are women. Most people who think about race are black people. White people don’t spend a whole lot of time, unless they’re white supremacists, thinking about how white they are.
Cory: So a lot of the guys who are wrapped up in this lifestyle aren’t thinking about it.
MK: Right. There’s a lot of confusion, a lot of reluctant bystanding, because they feel like they don’t have a choice. My students to a man tell me they want to be good fathers. They don’t have a clue. They’ve done no preparation, no practice. They’ve never diapered a baby, they’ve no idea how to cook, clean, anything that you’ll have to do if you’re a parent. You know, for them, being a father is like this mystical state of being. Suddenly when the baby emerges they think they will know all the things they need to know and of course they won’t. So one of the things I’m interested in is helping them develop those skills.
Cory: How would you go about trying to get your students interested in seeking out information [on being] good husbands and fathers, like you’re talking about. Why don’t they seek out the information?
MK: Most guys are not egalitarian parents because their wives do it. They don’t do it because they don’t have to, no one forces them to do it. My wife wanted me to clean a lot more than I normally do so I tried cleaning up the living room, I vacuumed, and she came in and said, “this is a mess.” Then she re-did it for me. I can’t do it right, she’s always going to re-do it for me, so I stopped. So, I say to these guys, if you were working at your job and your boss came in and said this is all wrong, would you stop? Would you say, “That’s okay, I can learn to do it better?” Why is it that when it comes to house work, guys just “stop?” Why not say, “I can learn to do it better? Show me what to do.” I think that a lot of guys don’t have a plan for this and don’t know they need one. In my experience, obviously there are a ton of mommy bloggers out there, obviously they have a lot of free time, talking about being a good enough mother. A lot of working mothers feel guilty that they’re not being the kind of mother that they want to be, that they’re not baking home-made chocolate chip cookies from scratch every day. The reason they’re feeling so guilty is that so often they are comparing themselves to their own mothers who did do that sort of stuff. They’re comparing themselves to their mothers and they don’t match up because they have careers.
The thing about dads though, is that instead of feeling guilty, we compare ourselves to our own fathers and we feel pretty damn self-congratulatory. If we do one dish, fix one meal, make the bed once, do the laundry once, we’re doing light years better than our fathers did. We’re out there patting ourselves on the back, so we don’t need to read a blog about it.
Cory: Anything else you would tell me [and our audience]?
MK: There are two things I would say to your audience. I speak to your audience as young men thinking about being husbands and fathers, but a lot of the men you connect with are probably also themselves the fathers of young men. It is essential that both mothers and fathers stay involved in their sons lives. We have this model of helicopter parenting early in their lives, we micromanage them and completely over-schedule them, and they go off to college and we go, “Okay, bye, see you later.” Then they go off into this vacuum where there’s no adult supervision at all. I think both parts are wrong. At a young age parents need to back off a little bit, and we also have to stay connected to our sons when they do leave home and go to college. Instead of being helicopter parents, I call it being power strip parents. You help your kids stay connected, you provide grounding for them, and if it gets to overload you run interference.
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October 8th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
What a great post! and a great blog too! As a father of 3 girls I find it SUPER important to be a REAL man and serve as an example for my little ladies.
I also work with young men and grown men in my strength and conditioning camps and must say that there is a huge gap between those men and boys who have great fathers and those who don’t.
Proud to be a dad!
Elliott
http://HulseStrength.com
October 9th, 2008 at 6:15 am
I had no idea there was a book out addressing the growing challenge of the wandering 20-something male. I have 3 sons of my own and I’m concerned. What hit me most about this post was the advise to “listen to your own heart.” Ultimately, I think it comes down to this. Once we stop listening as guys or don’t know how to listen, we drift. But it’s that inner drive and passion. What a great contribution to society to tackle this subject and offer it in the form of a book. I think it’s time I head over to Barnes & Noble to get a copy.
October 10th, 2008 at 1:33 am
What an insightful interview. I can definitely relate to many of the points made too. Even though I didn’t “drift” for many years after college, I still didn’t feel like a real grown-up person until I was 27 or 28 years old. It took that long to find my true purpose in life, as well as attain the level of self-discipline and self-sacrifice necessary to really achieve goals and begin moving forward (instead of in circles). I’m definitely interested in reading the book now.
October 12th, 2008 at 2:53 am
I’ve never been to this site before, and I quite disagree with what appear to be its underlying assumptions. First of all, given the current state of American paternity fraud laws, any man who gets married is suicidal and stupid. Men are accused of not wanting to commit except that it is, in reality, women who won’t commit. Bachelors are reacting rationally to women’s behavior. Second, there is this incredibly manipulative assumption that men are “mature” only when they *commit” and/or do what women want then to do. That is outright anti-male bigotry.
I am a big fan of Evolutionary Psychology. I’d recommend that you folks read “The Evolution of Desire” by David Buss. Make sure that you get the second edition.
October 12th, 2008 at 3:34 am
What is “the current state of American paternity fraud laws” that you reference? I’m not sure I understand your point of view.
October 12th, 2008 at 4:22 am
Jeremy:
Go to: http://www.supportguidelines.com/articles/art199903.html
Also go to: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1144414531354
Kimmel’s book is a sloppy, unprofessional treatment of young men in America because it totally ignores inequities in Family Law that make men, quite rightfully, averse to marriage.
Kimmel’s oversight is typical of most “Gender Studies” academics when dealing with issues concerning men.
October 12th, 2008 at 4:32 am
Oh, and by the way, there are over 2 MILLION single fathers in this country. Many of us fought sexism in the Family Court system in order to be with our children.
We clean, cook, and do everything else to make a home for our children just fine, contrary to Kimmel’s assertions above.
October 12th, 2008 at 5:04 am
The part about the female housemaker saying, “This is a mess” when her male partner has tried participating in the housework - some sociologist term it ‘maternal gatekeeping’. In this new world of gender roles, some women, too, are as confused about what is it that they are supposed to do. I mean, what does a woman who wants to be the ‘traditional’ full-time sole-housemaker-of-the-family say to her ‘modern’ female friends who believes a woman’s place is outside? ‘Maternal gatekeeping’ is one result: females constantly put down their male counterpart’s efforts at housekeeping, so that they have a reason to continue to being the sole housemaker (”Yes I know the men should help, but all he does is a bigger mess! I might as well as do it myself!”) Some males leapt at the chance to ’stop’ when this occurs because then they have a reason to stop even trying (”Well, I did try, but she told me not to anymore, so I’m not going to. But hey, I did try!”).
October 12th, 2008 at 8:45 am
It would appear that a male really is not a male unless he is told by either a feminist or by a female..
What a load of hysterical drivel. Men do not want to commit to women because the laws are totally skewed in their favor..
Simple, who would want to marry a Maureen Dowd just to spend the night comparing penises..
Me, I am staying single and going my own way. I have never hear such drivel..
Are all men turning into wimps ?
October 12th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
For info on paternity fraud, go to
http://www.paternityfraud.com/
I’m one of those “duped dads”, having found out when my daughter was seven years old that it was a lie to get me to marry her. The mother admitted committing perjury, using the child as bait, in order to dupe me out of my life savings.
After a five year marriage, she cashed it in, by telling the truth,to which of course the family law judge “ordered” me to pay her, not only half of my life savings but also child support and alimony, plus both her and my legal fees.
Within a year of divorce, I was no longer “allowed” to “visit” my children, including the son who is my biological child. I have not been permitted to see them in over 7 years now, though I never committed a crime (beyond being born male).
So forget these academic male feminists and their sub-feminist advice. The easiest way to spot them is that they claim it’s the fathers who abandon their children, when the truth is mothers are kicking dads out of the house in droves because the government offers them a plethora of cash to do so.
Then, if the father fails to make the “ordered” female-entitlement payments, he becomes a “deadbeat dad”, and goes to unconstitutional debtor’s prison. Believe me, the only way to truly appreciate the depth of anti-male sexism happening every day in courtrooms across America is to experience it for yourself. You will find it unbelievable, but the truth is you are just one in millions.
Oh and don’t forget, just as SHE has the “choice” as to whether the child will be aborted, so too does SHE have the “choice” whether you will even be “allowed” to visit your own children.
My advice: Don’t get married just because some male feminist from academia says doing so will make you his vision of a real man. If you do get married, get a pre-nup, and make sure she makes just as much money as you do. Second, don’t have children, becuase they are her choices and your responsibility, whether you can “visit” them or not. If you do have children, get a paternity test with each and every one as soon as they are born. Paternity fraud is rampant because it pays well and it is the only form of fraud where the courts make the victim pay the fraud perpetrator.
To really understand the scope and depth of the war against fathers, and the disasters it wreaks upon children, read Stephen Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody”.
October 12th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Come on you pussies… we men can do anything we want. If I want to play video games on the couch with a box of KFC what business is it of yours! These pussified men are giving men a bad name by dissing men and WHAT WE WANT.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Mothers have choices without responsibility, the legal status of a child. Fathers have responsibilities without choices, the legal status of a slave.
Ubiquitous neo-Marxist feminist propaganda from Hollywood, academia, and elsewhere aside, why would any reasonably sane person voluntarily place himself in a slavery situation from which there is no escape given the knowledge that he has the politicaly incorrect type of genitalia?
Remember, you may think she is special, but is she ever, at any time, no matter how good she may truly be now, going to decide that she can benefit herself more by cashing in her superior rights, especially given the fact that government can’t seem to get enough of passing new laws to give her ever more incentives to break up your family?
The answer, no matter who she is, is that all you can do is hope, and hope makes a very lousy strategy. The odds are more in your favor in Vegas. Good luck with that.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
When I happened on this web page the “won’t grow up” tone of the article immediately struck me as odd given the ubiquitiously known anti-male bent of the court system and general lack of personal freedom to enjoy their lives and freedom from oppression inheirent to the social schemata of “real man”. This same identical subject was in the public forum in the late 1980s (named at the time the “Peter Pan syndrome” and other disapproving “won’t grow up” or “won’t do his duties/responsibilities to society/women”). The philosophical flaws in the argument then are replicated here also. The men mentioned aren’t as much confused as they are pensive about any social system which is openly derisive to them, openly and many times illegally abrogative of their civil/human rights, and demands they perpetually serve as self-sacrificing, noble, chivalrous and second-class-citizen servants to what are frequently exploitive and ulterior women and corporations. In reality, this so-called “new developmental stage” is these men’s time of true assessment, awakening, and discoveries of the realities of the world compared and contrasted to what they have been told to do and be in their earlier lives. These men have always lived in the real world (not some “Guyland”), but by their late 20s have through studying grown wiser to the realities of how their culture actually regards them, have reconciled both the lies they were given and the implicit betrayal of those lies of expecting to be cheerfully exploited, and have developed strategies of how to survive, thrive, and grow in a culture openly hostile to their being male.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Kimmel’s language reveals an interesting bias: “So, I say to these guys, if you were working at your job and your boss came in and said this is all wrong, would you stop?”
He advises us men to think how we would react to our work-life boss, and treat our wives the same way. Kimmel thinks wives are the “boss” of the husband. And he thinks he’s an advocate of of a new manliness? This not the kind of manliness I want to be part of.
Kimmel thinks manliness is pussified, servile grovelling to women.
There is a real problem between men and women. That problem is women themselves. Women harbor logically contradictory desires, and they look to men to solve the contradictions. Unfortunately, it’s impossible. So, the modern woman lives a life of perpetual dissatisfaction, and she blames men for it. Stupid men like Kimmel will actually take that responsibility.
Uh uh. If a woman is super picky about how the house must be cleaned, guess what Superman? She can do it herself.
It’s time we gave women what they want: equality. Men should treat women like adults, not children in adult bodies.
Kimmel is a eunuch.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Considering the financial rape that approx. 35% of men who get married in amerika are forced to endure (50% marriages end in divorce, 70% of those are initiated by women), I think Guyland is really a safe and fun place to be.
This is reinforced when I see married men being towed by their landwhal….err, I mean wives, and the bitchiness these men are forced to tolerate in order to avoid the classic, all-amerikan, divorce court financial raping.
So, in response to Mr. Kimmel:
Marriage Strike! Marriage Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!
October 13th, 2008 at 12:30 am
I love my life, I happen to be single due to my inability to meet someone that desires to meet me half way. Actually my last girlfriend broke up with me because I “evoked true emotions in her” and she was only comfortable in contrived emotions of modern America in whatever popular form/social protocol there is for displaying them to one another. I would love to have a child, but I am not going to sacrifice the quality of life for that child and force myself into a relationship with only having kids in mind. That would be selfish and ego massaging at best, and to adopt would be similar due to giving the child only one parent.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Michael wrote, “I would love to have a child.”
Dude, adopt as a single male. I’m in the process of adopting now. SM777 is correct. There is no rational reason to have a woman in your life for any reason other than sex. Marriage was once an institution for the protection of children. Now it’s an institution to protect adult children, otherwise known as women.
You are very, very unlikely to find companionship from a modern woman. Read Kimmel’s article! Women fly off into pedantic rage if men don’t clean the house they way THEY want it.
One anecdote. I dated a really cool woman. Great in the sack, too. She was at my house, and used the restroom. She complained that I left the seat up — in MY house. WTF? I told her she HAD to leave the seat up in my house, just like I have to leave it down in her house. She sheepishly raised the seat, having never thought that a woman’s needs could be put behind a man’s. Relatively she was a wonderful woman, but even she had that implicit, unconscious selfishness, that sense of female entitlement, so emblematic of the modern woman.
Michael, you don’t need a woman to have a child. Adopt a boy and teach him to be a man, not the servile doormat Kimmel suggests.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:02 am
esmith512 wrote, “In reality, this so-called ‘new developmental stage’ is these men’s time of true assessment, awakening, and discoveries of the realities of the world compared and contrasted to what they have been told to do and be in their earlier lives.”
Very true. Kimmel has an absurdly gynocentric view of things. Chivalry towards a modern woman is more akin to Don Quixote than Sir Gallahad. Chivalry was a social system designed to protect female chastity. I’ve never met a chaste woman.
This is one of the modern woman’s absurdly contradictory desires: she wants a man who acts like an Eighteen century gentleman, while she is a 21st century feminist. WTF? Sorry little girls, if you want to be a 21st century feminist start taking equal responsibilities. In fact, we men insist.
It’s instructive to read personal ads on internet dating sites. Almost every sentence in these profiles directly contradicts another right next to it. “I want a man who’s ambitious, but spends lots of time with the family.” etc. The modern woman doesn’t have a man problem, she has an epistemological problem. And then intellectual clowns like Kimmel make this stuff out to be a problem with men.
Note to Kimmel: men don’t want to be chivalrous to the perpetually dissatisfied modern bitch, and in fact they will not be. Count on it.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Gentlemen, when the institution of marriage is finally destroyed in amerika, we will be able to have these relationship contracts without the government signing on as a third party. Until then, if you want to get married, emigrate from the NAU…err, I mean the USA and don’t ever make the mistake of bringing your wife here.
Also, if you want to remain in this part of the new world order, “independent” women are good for sex, however, if you want a meaningful relationship, I recommend family, friends and pets.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Great post. Definitely something to think about.
December 24th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Strike,Strike, Strike.
December 24th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
or Lancelot
January 18th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Well, gentlemen…
I’m a 34 year old female. I always worked and am currently studying to be a lawyer. I dated a 34 year old man for about nine months. He has a 10 year old daughter from a previous marriage that he loves to death - and routinely guilttrips. He has worked really hard his entire life and seems to do all the right things, yet there was something distinctly narcissistic about his “being a good father”. I make my own money, I don’t care if the house is spotless - and I was the one being told that I was not doing things right (we’re talking leaving dishes in the sink overnight sometimes). Our financial ability was pretty much equal when we were together. He had a vasectomy, so I wasn’t with him to have a child of my own. I’m not saying I’m some cool chick that everyone should appreciate, but what the heck am I supposed to do when a guy loves to be able to afford to “take care” of me but resents it at the same time, and has a clear problem if a woman makes more than him (there was a potential for it in our relationship simply because of circumstances.) Oh - and he was the one who broke up with me after I called him on his stuff.
Any input? If anything, I’m the one feeling like men won’t commit until they are ready to have a child (i.e. to “grow up”) - and that may not be in my future. I’d rather adopt because of my views of the world. All I want is a companion in my life, and what I seem to be running into is male ego. No offense.
January 31st, 2009 at 4:58 pm
What is “narcissistic” about being a good father?
Perhaps after spending much money, time and energy just to spend time with his kids, he is just finally able to enjoy his daughter.
What does marriage have to do with having a companion or “commitment”. Why can’t you be satisfied with the commitment you already have?
January 31st, 2009 at 5:01 pm
SFGirl, what’s wrong with the male ego? It’s an evolved, almost purely biological part of being a man. To complain of the male ego is to complain of masculinity. Removing the male ego from a relationship is equivalent to removing the man himself. A healthy male ego is a good thing, and you can probably track most of human achievement back to it’s proper functioning.
Dominance is the ability to make decisions and dictate the time and place of critical events. Few men will honestly tell women the truth, but here it is. Men are all about dominance. It’s hard-wired and can’t be changed. That’s how men are. Even the male sex drive is subordinate to the dominance drive.
Amongst all higher order primates, it is females who “provide” and males who “protect.” The idea of the provider male is an invention of the modern industrial era, and it is rather perverse. Many males are conflicted. They are expected to “provide” and “protect,” so what the heck are women supposed to do for men? This is the source of the contradictory desires of your ex-partner.
Men need to relax. It’s not only OK for a woman to make more and “provide,” but it’s natural and perfectly fair. If a man is expected to lay down his life at any moment to protect his family and community, then surely he should receive concomitant social compensation for it. The modern version of the “provider” is very recent and historically unusual.
Women need to get real. At root, men are honor-lovers. Men will not protect if they are not honored. If men’s protection is superfluous, then men will leave. It’s that simple. If you keep showing and telling a man that you don’t need him, eventually he’ll believe you and go where he is needed.
As a woman, you can make more money and still demonstrate that a man is needed. This is how a man wants to be loved: to be honored, needed, and exclusively desire. Most modern women are incapable of doing those things. Worse, most modern women find those things to be repugnant. This is like saying that loving a man is repugnant, which indeed many prominent feminist thinkers have actually maintained.
Men notice this. They then exercise the only social power they possess in relationships: they move on to another woman.
February 1st, 2009 at 12:07 am
SFGirl, no offense but you sound like the one with the ego problem to me. The impression I get from your post is “I’m quite a catch but oh, HE broke up with me, so there’s something wrong with him”. Why is it such a big deal that he broke up with you? It’s quite obvious that you guys have some sort of personality clash, so what’s the fuss with breaking up so that both of you can find someone more suited to each other? I suspect - and again, no offense - you’re indignant that he wouldn’t dance to your tune. Or perhaps you’re one of the women who can’t handle men doing the breaking up?
Before you call me a MCP or whatever, I’m a girl as well. And I agree with what Jeff said. In my opinion, not ALL men are exactly like what Jeff described, but a good deal of them do, in varying degrees. And what’s wrong with that, indeed. Women have the same type of desires - to want to be loved, respected, desired. It’s not a male or female thing to me; it’s just human. Why some women think all those are the exclusive rights of only females is beyond me.
And my curiosity compels me to ask - why were you dating the said “narcissistic father” anyway? You make it sound like he’s just a long list of minuses, but what about his pluses? Perhaps if you focus more on your partner’s good points you’ll be less resentful and insistent on changing him/her. Trust me, other people would know if you think they are less than perfect.
February 12th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Hey all, thanks for your replies. Here’s the deal; it’s not about me being “quite a catch”. I am not sure how to say this without coming off as someone with a big ego, but my whole life I’ve been dealing with people as just people, not really based on gender. I don’t know how to deal with men who want it both ways - to be the protector/provider (regardless of whether it’s a recent invention or not) AND not feel like that’s why women are with them. Am I supposed to respect a man for his male traits or for his human traits? I never thought that being respected and desired was confined only to females. Again, I’m not sure how to say this without coming off as a “great catch”, but my former partner worked his butt off, and he did know I respected the heck out of him for it.
Jeff can say that men are confused, but I don’t understand what’s so confusing about being a partner who contributes to the relationship. My ex was the “provider” for his former wife, originally loved the purpose in life it gave him, and ended up resenting being the only one that worked. One of the big reasons I started dating him was because he said he wanted to be in an equal partnership. In reality, I couldn’t offer to go dutch on dinner so both of us could enjoy it instead of him worrying whether he could pay (as a side note, both of us have grad school loans and other obligations, so we were on equal footing with our financial situation).
That’s what ended up being the problem (not so much focusing on the positive vs. the negative): sometimes it’s confusing when people say one thing and then do something else.