Recently, the Barnetts went shopping for a new car for Susan. Once it became clear who would be driving the car, the salesperson spoke almost exclusively with her. Although it made perfect sense to Alex, it irritated him to no end. He was fuming as they left the dealership but couldn't really give Susan a good reason why. For him, the act of buying a car has gender-role expectations attached to it that he did not even recognize.
HOW ROLES ARE BRED
What we call "gender" encompasses biological sex but goes beyond it to the socially prescribed roles deemed appropriate for each sex by the culture in which we live. Complicating the issue is that only the broad outlines of gender roles are drawn by the larger society. The gender roles we each carry out are highly individualistic, built on our biological and physical makeup, appearance and personality, life experiences such as work and education, and history of sexual and romantic interactions. Each element influences how others perceive us as a man or a woman and how we perceive others' intentions and expectations for us.
What's more, the religious beliefs we do--or do not--espouse, our ethnic inheritances, the degree to which experiences with peers affect us, and the role models to which we are exposed, as well as personal factors, are all filtered through and shaped by our experiences in the most complex club to which we each belong, our family of origin. If we ever hope to untangle the gender-role beliefs that today tie our relationships in knots, we must examine our experiences in the primary context of socialization, the nuclear family.
One of the first things we ask when a child is born is "Is it a girl or a boy?" Most of us find it extremely difficult to talk about another person--even an infant--without referring to "he" or "she." Gender is one of the first things each of us learns about ourself as a young child, and the gender roles that we learn in our families continue to develop as we grow. 'We begin taking in elements' of gender roles from significant others from the time we're born. These ideas are incorporated into our individual sense of self and assumptions about how men and women--both ourself and others--ought to believe and behave. We learn what is expected of each of us not only from what others teach us directly but also from how we are treated, disciplined, nurtured, and loved.
What we learn about gender organizes our behavior, our beliefs, and our relationships, including our expectations of how our partner should behave. We judge whether or not we are loved by whether our partners love us in the way we believe love ought to be shown, which is based on what we experienced in our family of origin. In a recent marital therapy session, Susan remarked that she was unsure some days whether Alex really loved her. He shot back, "Of course I do, I'm here, aren't I?" "Yes," Susan said, "but you don't seem to enjoy being with me unless you want sex." Hurt and frustrated, Alex sighed, "I go to work, I help with the house and Eliza, I'm faithful to you--all that means I love you!" Life experiences given each of them unspoken scripts, highly idiosyncratic, defining how men and women should, and do, express love to their partners.
Solving the Barnett's problems would be easier if all men behaved one way and all women another. But no one can predict how any two people will react to each other's ideas about gender until they interact with each other. It is the interaction of roles and expectations that creates all the heat.
Despite their struggles over housework, Susan and Alex are compatible in their approach to parenting. They each had nurturing adults of both genders in their life. Each provides Eliza with ample expressions of love and affection. Their gender-role expectations for fathers and mothers fit.
TOO CLOSE TO SEE
Gender is so basic to our assumptions about who we are and how we and others should behave that we are seldom aware that gender-related experiences influence and shape the ways we think about others and ourselves. Our beliefs--typically experienced as "oughts" and "shoulds"--nevertheless guide our behavior, establishing the nature of the interaction in intimate relationships without our conscious awareness.
Into our basic sense of ourself as man or woman, our so-called gender-role identity, we also incorporate boundaries, experienced as "dos" and "don'ts," as in "I could never do that." The oughts and shoulds and the dos and don'ts of gender beliefs are played out as hidden forces in intimate relationships, invisible because they are so central to our sense of who we are. Yet they typically act up in emotionally volatile situations--those times when what we are really doing is fighting to enforce our role beliefs in the relationship. The heat is intense because to give up the fight is to give up a part of the self. We look to our partners to meet our needs in the ways we each think they should be met because that is what each of us feels we need to have our perception of self validated.
Gender beliefs carry special power because couples don't talk about the assumptions that fuel arguments. To a large degree, we may not really understand what the passion is all about. As therapists, we believe it crucial that couples do understand what the passion is all about. That allows partners to discuss the deeper issues--rarely the content of arguments but the process, the patterns by which they air or do not air mismatched gender beliefs.
Tags:
1950's,
conflict,
contemporary society,
gender,
gender relations,
household,
interchange,
marriage,
pathways,
pizza,
relationship,
roles,
spheres,
third time,
women and men
