"It's not so much that men can't provide the emotional
support that women want as that men and women define emotional
support differently," according to Nock. "As marriages become
more focused on emotion and happiness, men and women are
defining closeness in somewhat different terms." For men,
actual physical proximity is often as good as intimacy ("I'm
here, aren't I?"), while women want something more
demonstrative.
Just look at how men and women communicate with members
of their own gender.
I have seen my wife sit down knee-to-knee with one of her
close friends and unload, with no preamble or pretext of doing
anything else besides perhaps drinking a glass of wine or cup
of tea. Guys, for the most part, need some distraction in order
to talk about feelings.
Two summers ago, while visiting some old friends in
France (and how is that for effete?), my wife marveled at how
my longtime pal Randy and I reconnected after not seeing each
other for years. We sat knee-to-knee as well -- with our iBooks
linked, swapping music files. But what she did not hear was us
comparing notes on aging -- his mother had passed away, mine
was ailing -- or our marriages, topics we would not have easily
broached otherwise.
It's as though men need something to do with their
hands.
Having established that some men are willing to try to
meet women halfway, it's safe to ask what women can do for men.
Sex is seriously underrated as a passport to that communicative
country a lot of wives want to explore. While some women seem
to resent the fact that their husbands want them, and want to
be wanted back, the very act (as opposed to talk) allows a lot
of men to be more emotionally available. And it, too, gives us
something to do with our hands.
"The complaints I hear from men are about their spouses
not taking their sexual needs seriously enough," says Mark
Epstein, a psychiatrist in private practice in New York and
author of Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life. "Men
become vulnerable when they are sexually engaged. Maybe if
women didn't feel demeaned or objectified by male sexuality
they wouldn't have to push it away so much. They could start to
feel it as more of a form of communication." He acknowledges
that many women may see it as more work -- but isn't that what
they're asking of their men? Sex is one area where men and
women can explore differences without yielding their individual
identities.
"One thing that has to happen in a couple is that each
one has to make room for the other's desire," says Epstein,
"which is different from the way you experience it. You can
approach it but never totally understand it."
Women can cut men a bit of slack, and try to empathize
with these rough creatures (remember Beauty and the Beast?)
rather than change them. They can also adjust their
expectations. As Farrell says, "If you expect a man to be a
killer and be home on time for dinner, you will end up feeling
depressed about your partnership."
After all, men have quickly become masters at another
kind of intimacy: fatherhood. Many contemporary fathers feel
that they are an upgrade from the previous version. Warm,
loving, generous fathers are lionized in the culture rather
than scorned, points out Terry Real. "The current generation of
men is much better as fathers than their fathers were," he
says, "but it's not clear to me that we're much better husbands
than our fathers were." The difference is that much less risk
is involved in being vulnerable or intimate with your child
than there is with your mate. The relationship of parent and
child is not that of equals, and while we may have a lot of
expectations of our children, we generally don't look to them
for complete emotional fulfillment.
Truth be known, most men want the same thing from their
mates that their wives are looking for in their husbands. They
want to be understood by them, even if it means understanding
themselves first. There is plenty of evidence that men want and
need marriage as much as women do and are willing to learn new
dance steps. Just put them in bullet points, and let us lead
sometimes.
Sean Elder's essay "The Lock Box" appeared in The Bastard
on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings
About Love, Loss, Fatherhood and Freedom (William Morrow,
2004).
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