Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably, they are both disappointed. –Albert Einstein
Tom and Lisa are having an argument. Lisa is hurt and angry. Tom can clearly see that Lisa is upset, and her tears make him surprisingly uncomfortable. While Tom would like to feel more empathic, there is something about Lisa’s strong feelings that is distressing to Tom and gets in the way. Because Tom is uncomfortable with his own strong feelings, he begins to withdraw and detach to protect himself emotionally. For reasons he doesn’t fully understand, it becomes increasingly important to Tom to remain rational and unemotional, and he is increasingly critical of and irritated with Lisa for being “too emotional.” Lisa can feel Tom withdrawing, and the more he withdraws, the more anxious Lisa becomes, and the more urgently she pursues him, trying to find a way to make some kind of emotional connection with him. Now, they are locked in a mutually destructive cycle; the more Lisa pushes for the emotional connection she yearns for, the more Tom detaches. The more Tom tries to control his own fear by detaching, the more anxious Lisa gets.
This argument may be painfully familiar to many of you. This is the kind of conflict that can devolve into an increasingly destructive power struggle, with each member trying to “win” rather than making a genuine effort to understand each other and work toward a mutually satisfactory outcome. Each member of the couple believes that he or she is doing their best to get to a better outcome, yet, together, they seem unable to avoid repeating that unhappy ending again and again.
Over time, many women often get drawn into the role of being the emotionally needy one who wants more intimacy in their relationships and are frequently disappointed in their partners. Women often learn to settle for acts of service from their male partners as a not very satisfactory substitute for the emotional intimacy and closeness they desire, and they sometimes turn to friends or even their children for the connection and intimacy they seek. They often settle, in part, because they are taught by their mothers and other women to protect themselves from repeated disappointment by significantly lowering their expectations of men.
Men are often drawn into the role of the stoic, unemotional ones who are constantly frustrated at their inability to please their partners. They frequently learn from their fathers to express caring and to be good men through acts of service. They are taught to feel good about themselves to the extent they are protective and helpful to the people they love and to feel like failures when anyone in their family is upset and they can’t fix it. It is not hard to see how this is often a volatile mix. This is known as the “wife demand/husband withdraws” (WD/HD) pattern, which research shows is a powerful predictor of marital dissatisfaction and divorce.
This rigid gender role arrangement, although stilted for both people, can work well enough for some couples for years or even decades. It works as long as women feel sufficiently loved by the acts of service their partners so eagerly provide and as long as there is not enough conflict in the relationship to activate men’s fears of being inadequate or abandoned. Couples can unconsciously settle into a set of role expectations that enable each of them to both give and receive enough love to feel good about themselves.
Over time, however, this increasingly rigid polarization of roles can have an increasing cost. What can start out as a satisfyingly symbiotic understanding can gradually degrade into a mutually frustrating arrangement in which both partners feel increasingly resentful, increasingly distant, and trapped. Each partner genuinely believes that they can no longer be themselves in their relationships, which is the most common explanation people give for divorcing: “I just didn’t feel like I could be myself anymore.”
For women, settling for acts of service can start to wear thin. Many women increasingly resent being the one in charge of everything in the family, including the relationship itself. Men are often eager to please and happy to “help,” but their baseline is often “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Men are often more focused on avoiding conflict rather than aspiring to greater closeness, so their initiation of connection in the relationship is often limited to sex. As a result, in many heterosexual relationships, the initial expression of dissatisfaction or unhappiness often surfaces with the woman first.
Both men and women tend to see themselves trapped in this dance and dependent on their partner for release. However, either partner can unilaterally change the script at any time. For example, rather than waiting to be told what to do and feeling criticized, men can take the initiative and break out of some of the roles they have fallen into by proactively becoming more engaged in childcare and some of the tasks of running the household. For women, the way out of the dilemma may be to give what they have been trying to get. Instead of fussing at their partners as a way of leveraging the care and affection they deserve, they might try giving that same care and affection to their partner, trusting that it will come back to them.
P.S. The title comes from an old joke. “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but first, the bulb has to want to change.”
Excerpted in part from Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men’s Fears of Women Impact Their Intimate Relationships (Lasting Impact Press).
References
Schrodt, P., & Ledbetter, A. M. (2007). Communication processes that mediate family communication patterns and mental well-being: A mean and covariance structures analysis of young adults from divorced and nondivorced families. Human Communication Research, 33(3), 330–356.
Weiss, A.G. (2021). Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men's Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships. Lasting Impact Press.
Revitalize Your Relationship by Getting Unstuck From Traditional Roles
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12.02.2024
Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably, they are both disappointed. –Albert Einstein
Tom and Lisa are having an argument. Lisa is hurt and angry. Tom can clearly see that Lisa is upset, and her tears make him surprisingly uncomfortable. While Tom would like to feel more empathic, there is something about Lisa’s strong feelings that is distressing to Tom and gets in the way. Because Tom is uncomfortable with his own strong feelings, he begins to withdraw and detach to protect himself emotionally. For reasons he doesn’t fully understand, it becomes increasingly important to Tom to remain rational and unemotional, and he is increasingly critical of and irritated with Lisa for being “too emotional.” Lisa can feel Tom withdrawing, and the more he withdraws, the more anxious Lisa becomes, and the more urgently she pursues him, trying to find a way to make some kind of emotional connection with him. Now, they are locked in a mutually destructive cycle; the more Lisa pushes for the emotional connection she yearns for, the more Tom detaches. The more Tom tries to control his own fear by detaching, the more anxious Lisa gets.
This argument may be painfully familiar to many of you. This is the kind of conflict that can devolve into an increasingly destructive power struggle, with each member trying to “win” rather than making a genuine effort to understand each other and work toward a mutually satisfactory outcome. Each........
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