There is a pattern in arguments that is familiar to many heterosexual couples. The woman most often is the one to initiate an argument, bringing up something she is unhappy with. The man is often defensive or minimizes the importance of her complaint. Feeling dismissed or not heard, the women often become increasingly upset and more emotional.
The more emotional she becomes, the more withdrawn and defensive the man can become, sometimes becoming openly critical of her being emotional and insisting that she remain more rational and unemotional as he is. These arguments most often end with both people feeling more distant from each other and more pessimistic about their relationship. Both the man and woman can come away believing they are the ones doing things in the preferred manner and that if only their partner would behave more like them, things would go so much better.
Psychologists and popular culture alike have tended to lay much of the blame for this dysfunctional pattern on men, stereotyping them as emotionally constricted and controlling in intimate relationships. While often accurate, those descriptions leave out other critically important dimensions of the interactive dynamics of intimate relationships between men and women.
What is often overlooked is how uncomfortable men are whenever women have strong feelings. This is particularly true when women are upset in some way, but men can also feel uncomfortable when women are excited, full of joy, or even really turned on. Men can be particularly uncomfortable whenever their partners are feeling anxious or distressed. It does not even have to be about them. Women can reassure their male partners endlessly that they are just upset, not upset with him, but that may make little to no difference.
In some cases, why is an openly emotional woman so destabilizing for many men? Why don’t these men ignore her and go off and do their own thing until she’s over it? Why do so many men find women’s emotions impossible to ignore? As with most relationship-related questions, the answer is complex and multi-layered.
Simply put, some men are raised to feel responsible for women’s happiness. If their partner is unhappy, these men believe they have failed in some critically important way.
Some men are also less familiar with and less able to talk about their own feelings, so they feel disadvantaged when the conversation with their partner becomes more emotional. This is something like an American traveling abroad who wants other people to speak to them in English rather than trying to learn at least some rudiments of the language spoken in the country they are visiting.
Men are generally less emotionally fluent than their female partners because our culture stereotypically considers the world of emotions to be feminine territory. From early childhood, some men are often derided or mocked for showing signs of emotions other than anger (the one emotion allowed to men). “Big boys don’t cry.” “Don’t be a sissy.”
Men may also be averse to women’s strong feelings because they know from painful experiences that emotions are contagious. Being around other people with strong feelings is as contagious as a yawn. When women are more emotional, men are likely to feel the internal stirrings of some of their own feelings that they are uncomfortable with and have learned to suppress. For these men, being in an intimate relationship with a woman can be like being in alcohol recovery and hanging out with your friends at a bar.
On some level, some men recognize that they are not as emotionally well-developed as their partners. In some cases, women seem to have stronger emotions, have an easier time expressing their feelings, and are more empathic in responding to other people’s feelings. Research generally confirms that women are more emotionally expressive than men across a range of emotions and across numerous cultural settings, although not nearly the magnitude of differences as hyped in books like Men Are From Mars.
These differences in the expression of emotion between men and women are not innate; they are largely taught. Some girls are socialized, primarily by their parents, at ages as young as four months old to be more emotionally expressive. At the same time, some boys are often subtly conditioned to suppress any displays of emotion.
On a more unconscious level, many men may fear something is wrong with them regarding emotions. Men can worry that they do not have the feelings they should have—the emotions they see their partners expressing.
My father died when I was a young man. I loved and was very close to my father, so I decided to give his eulogy. My biggest fear was not that I wouldn’t be able to get through it but that I would not cry, which would confirm my worst fear about myself: I was a cold, heartless son-of-a-b*tch. However, I sobbed so much during the eulogy that the rabbi repeatedly tried to pull me away from the lectern. Although distraught, I also felt an enormous sense of relief.
Consequently, some men work hard to manage women’s emotional experiences to protect themselves from the discomfort—or even danger—of their own feelings. When a man’s partner is upset, in some cases, that becomes the single preoccupation in his life, as if nothing can happen until this situation is resolved. “If momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.” This is not a process that men may be conscious of; they are just aware of getting increasingly uncomfortable and feeling an urgent need to do whatever they must to stop it.
Excerpted, in part, from Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men’s Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships. Lasting Impact Press.
References
Gray, J. (1993). Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Harper Collins.
May, C. (2017). Are Women More Emotionally Expressive than Men? Retrieved June 9, 2019, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-women-more-emotionally-expressive-than-men/?redirect=1.
Rivers, C., & Ph.D., R. B. (2013). The Truth About Girls and Boys: Challenging Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children(Reprint ed.). Columbia University Press.
Rivers, C., & Ph.D., R. B. (2013). The Truth About Girls and Boys: Challenging Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children(Reprint ed.). Columbia University Press.
Wester, S. R., Vogel, D. L., Pressly, P. K., & Heesacker, M. (2002). Sex differences in emotion: A critical review of the literature and implications for counseling psychology. The Counseling Psychologist, 30(4), 630-652.
Weiss, A. G. (2021) Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men’s Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships. Lasting Impact Press.
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