This post is not strictly about spirituality. It is about love and partnership in the 21st century. Men and women have been having a kind of hard time for decades now with roughly 50% of marriages ending in divorce. As a marriage counselor I often have a front row seat at this crisis. Recently I have been noticing a theme: woman who come in with their husbands and wonder how he looked so attractive as suitor and so pathetic as a husband. Their complaints are very similar: he does not do enough (including in cases where they acknowledge that "he" does more cleaning than she does.) He is not good with money (sometimes does not earn enough, sometimes spends to much or is clueless about family finances.) Does not communicate about meaningful things and seems annoyingly uniformed about her feelings. But as those complaints resolve there is almost always the complaint that he does not exhibit passion towards them, does not initiate sex, or show desire towards them. I have been known to point out "how does that work while fielding all this other disappointment, frustration and complaints from you that he will be grabbing you for a passionate kiss?"
A recent NY Times article (2/14/2014 The All or Nothing Marriage) on the history of marriage reports on stages that went from the founding of this country till about 1850 referred to as Institutional marriage where marriage was primarily an economic partnership, focused on cooperating on getting a roof over head to food on the table. The next stage, compassionate marriage ran from 1850 till roughly 1965 was based upon strictly defined sex roles of male provider and female childrearer, but where both filled many of their companionship needs with same gender friends but expected to find love in their marriage. This would be the frame of our parents or grandparents marriages. But it says since then we have turned towards the model of self-expressive marriage that sees marriage as a vehicle for self-discovery, growth and personal development. I have to say I wonder if this is a new model shared by both genders or if many men are not still trying to be the husbands that their father's were: providers and fathers but not emotional partners? The 2006 book Mating in Captivity in fact hypothesis that the mutual tasks of household responsibilities and erotic sexuality are essentially incompatible. With chapter titles: More Intimacy less sex: love seeks closeness but desire needs distance.....well you start to get a sense of the problem.
I would describe the problem this way: a generation of women raised as feminists or in the shadow of feminism now seeks equality in marriage which is envisioned as a sharing of the work of marriage: taking turns with chores, child rearing and financial matters, and yet in an older more reptilian part of our brain is still the idea that the "man" will be strong, confident and decisive (and the gentle but aggressive lover). You may already notice the collision waiting to happen here. As one man cynically told his therapy: "My wife would like me to share all my deepest feelings with her, but only as long as I'm not authentic because if I tell her of my fears, insecurities or doubts, that is a complete turn off." So the man is wanted to be strong but not so strong that he dominates, confident but not to the degree that he would ignore her needs and feelings, (confidence while checking in?) and decisive as long as she likes his decision. Not surprisingly men fail this impossible tight rope walk and then face their wives disappointment. As one man recently told me: Well if I withdraw I can just not care about it, or if I just make all the decisions I can be in charge. But in the face of the disappointment, why keep initiating different efforts; the odds are against me." And thus the now long dethroned suitor becomes the belled cat.
During the courtship both parties describe that there connection was easy and fun and their was lots of sex. Well yes that makes sense with no mortgage, no kids to feed or bath; he could be confident, relaxed and fun. She could be sexy and attentive and supportive without any bills to worry about or kids to tend. Is it hopeless then? Or should they just never have kids? No I would not say that, but what I would say is that we have to reexamine what we expect.
If we have kids then the expectation needs to be that both will be sleep deprived for years, that both have more than 40 hour weeks and the trick is to not look resentfully at your spouse as not having done enough to save you, but at them gratefully for every piece they did you did not have to do! Do not measure their help against what it was like without kids. Measure it against what it would be like if you were a single parent. Figure out how to exhibit the comadairee that is exhibited in the old Bill Crosby show where Cliff and Claire Huxtible laugh together that the children are in a plot to take the house from them, to drive them mad and turn towards each other in the expectation of understanding, perspective, humor and absolute backing.
But the much more complicated terrain is the intimate life of a couple. I have had an image of a woman saying to her knight: get off that horse come down here and stand by my side as my equal and when he dismounts she says in dismay: "you are shorter than me." Sisters I think we have to decide whether you want that equal partner or that strong guy knight. I have known women who did not expect their emotional intimacy to be with their husbands. They long ago decided men were not capable of that and seek that sharing with their girlfriends and tell their husband the practical things and the things they gauge him to be interested in. I have known many men who say their wives are their closest friends and yet are referencing a level of sharing most women would snort at. So in some of these unions the dilemma has been solved by having lower expectations.
I don't think we will all make it. There are many marriages that combine the pre-1963 model on one spouses part with the post 1963 model with the other and the paradigm collision takes its inevitable causalities. The ever widening gap between the rich and the poor leave an increasingly cadre of those raised in the middle class with middle class expectations that will never be realized in their marriage. In such marriages the fighting over bills and kids will be the fall out. Many modern men have no chance of providing as their father did and the old model and the new again collide to produce two frustrated partners each blaming the other for how their home life has turned out. Hollywood movies and romance models still portray a swept off their feet model of love which shows the "fun and easy connection with passionate sparks" side of love, but never goes beyond the falling in love stage to show how intimacy functions within the grind of day to day demands and disappointments There are several generations of men who know they are suppose to be sympathetic and caring and gentle and yet have not been taught by either father or mother how to listen empathetically to another person, and thus struggle without a skill set to fufill the role of the new husband.
However, what of those rare 25% of marriages that the NY Times article say are successful by sharing deeply every week? Interestingly, what I have also noticed in these couples with dissatisfied wives is the wives as they loose confidence in their husbands increasingly take on more and more responsibilities: they manage the check book, carry the fear of whether the bills will all get paid, they do more of the child nurturing, they carry lists of things that need to be done for the house and in all anxiety the libido turns off completely. They look tough and yet when asked the right questions they acknowledge being frightened, feeling very, very lonely and longing for a shoulder to turn on (but certainly not their husbands unreliable shoulder). Their husbands sexual interest starts looking like neediness and thus the final burden. They are so busy being strong that they no longer can say the more vulnerable things: I need you, I'm scared, I am lonely, I want you. Like Lake Woebegone, in this world all the women are strong and all the men are good looking.
How do we engage intimacy in this brave new land? I think for men it means neither retreating is the hopelessness of ever not disappointing their partner, or putting on the old cowboy hat and trying to be "the MAN" but engaging in that very difficult middle ground that involves listening, not trying to fix but simply empathizing in a clear and visible way- staying in that tension in the middle between giving in and taking over but instead collaboration. It means not going into little boy mode in face of a woman with power, nor going for the Patriarchal Power over mode. For women it means giving up the comfortable old powerlessness of our mothers who could not say directly what they needed or wanted and thus manipulated indirectly for their needs through disappointment and disapproval. And it means not trying to be our fathers...not simply taking over the male roles of responsibilities. It also means engaging in that uncomfortable middle ground where we don't blame our partners for our unhappiness, have to take our own risks and fight our own battles, but tell the vulnerable truth about what we need and how we feel and our need for comfort and emotional support. Which is to say that woman also must stay out of the patriarchal patterns of either having power only indirectly or attempting to put on pants and have power over. Even more complexly, it means having to stop seeing men as either knights or sons, but really have an image of them as collaborative partners in a shared life who will sometimes lean on us just as we lean on them. For both genders it means listening, accepting, forgiving and collaborating.
