Last year I was asked by the editor of a men's magazine
to write a story about intimacy in relationships. His was one
of those publications that advise the American man how to
flatten his stomach and increase his chest size -- that look,
in other words, like a lot of women's magazines. I spoke to the
requisite marriage experts: psychologists and sociologists who
had stared into the murk of modern male-female relations.
Though I tried to steer my sources toward simple declarative
sentences and do-it-yourself answers, the editor was not
happy.
"Couldn't you just give it to us in bullet points?" he
asked. "We want a step-by-step guide on how to be emotionally
intimate with your woman."
Therein lies a precis of the principal dilemma in
marriage today. Men have come to accept -- even celebrate --
their wives' careers and paychecks while learning,
step-by-step, how to bathe the baby and baste the turkey. But
there is no Julia Child's style primer on closeness, no chart
with diagrams: Insert A into slot B, and there you go. Intimacy
achieved. Let's go have a cold one.
It would be funny if it weren't so painful. "It's
probably the real cause of half of all divorces," according to
Sam Margulies, a divorce mediator in Greensboro, North
Carolina, and author of several books on the subject of marital
breakups. The changes in women's lives -- their roles,
ambitions, opportunities -- have been considered from every
angle. But men's lives have changed too, in ways that are more
confusing, more contradictory and often less welcome. Men did
not ask to have their roles redefined. Now, they're looking for
an instruction manual complete with fine print -- and a
translator's guide as well.
"Very few women could compare their lives to their
mothers" and say, "We look pretty similar," says Steven Nock, a
professor of sociology at the University of Virginia who has
studied what marriage means to men. "Women have so many
dramatically different options in their lives. But where are
men taking their cues about what it means to be a husband or a
father? There is much less discussion in our society about
that."
The guidelines for being a good husband used to be
simple: provide, protect, maybe trim the hedges now and then.
Now wives still want all that in a mate -- and more. Today's
wife wants a confidante and soul mate as well.
The requirements changed with no warning, and many
husbands feel blindsided. Most men were raised with the idea
that making it in the outside world is how you score points at
home. For many women that also still holds true.
It's not as though they want men to be less goal-oriented
or less interested in money. They're asking for a breadwinner
and a best friend.
But the skills needed to be a successful soldier or CEO
are literally antithetical to the caring-sharing sort. Success
and even heroism are still measured by a man's ability to
compartmentalize, desensitize, act decisively and sacrifice
himself. "The essence of masculinity is that what it takes to
get love makes us distant from love," says Warren Farrell, San
Diego based author of Why Men Earn More and Why Men Are the Way
They Are. "That is the male dilemma in a nutshell."
"Men are beside themselves," Farrell continues. "There is
a fundamental contradiction: If [a man] is successful at work
he has really prepared himself to be unsuccessful at home. He's
damned if he does and damned if he doesn't."
Marriage changes everything. Most men accept that and
even welcome the transition. Men recognize that marriage
requires compromise and sacrifice -- but their beliefs about
what's most important are surprisingly traditional, and not
necessarily in line with women's beliefs. In his sociological
research, Nock followed more than 6,000 young men for decades,
gathering data on their social lives, careers and habits. His
conclusion is that most men undergo a profound personal
transformation when they marry. It is a passage into manhood in
an era when the very definition of manhood is in flux.
"Marriage changes men because it is the venue in which adult
masculinity is developed and sustained," he writes in Marriage
in Men's Lives.
A married man works longer hours, moves up the career
ladder faster and earns more money than his single peers. He
spends more time with his relatives. He donates less to
charity; he spends less time hanging out with his buddies and
more time in formal social organizations like business and
civic associations.
A husband even thinks differently. "The way men view the
world and their place in it changes in the act of marrying,"
says Nock. "Marriage makes people more conventional. If they
are religious, they become more devout.
They acquire the trappings of property owners, which
makes them more conservative. They're less likely to engage in
risky or deviant behaviors.
Entering into this traditional arrangement has the effect
of making men more traditional. A wedding is more than an
expression of love; it's a public declaration that a man plans
to abide by a set of social expectations about male adulthood.
The seriousness with which men approach marriage and the
lengths they are willing to go in order to be better husbands
are some of the best evidence we have that men take commitment
seriously and are willing to do what is expected of them to
make marriage work.
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