Alex has since agreed to do all the grocery shopping and to prepare healthy meals when it's his turn to cook. He has also struggled to do his part in the emotional maintenance of the relationship. His usual response to conflict is to take distance and then wait for Susan to seek reconciliation. He set a goal to take more responsibility for making up after arguments and to nurture the relationship by not allowing conflicts to drag on into the next day, initiating two dates a month, and spending more time with Susan by watching one less television program each evening.
After examining her Gendergram, Susan realized that her drive to excel at work was in part a vestige of trying to please her father. Her brother James has not been successful in his chosen career, and it seems as if her father has transferred his aspirations for the success of his children onto her. He was extremely pleased when she was promoted to VP. Susan has begun to wonder if she is driving herself harder than necessary to succeed. She is feeling physically stressed and believes it is compromising the quality of her marriage and her parenting. Accordingly, she has decided to begin an exercise program two days a week, to leave work one hour early whenever possible, to take a couple of afternoons off per month to spend with Eliza, and to plan a weekend getaway with Alex as soon as possible.
TWO CAN PLAY
If you are currently in a relationship, then the critical portion of the Gendergram exercise involves discussion of the results with your partner. We know from our clinical experience that couples find the Gendergram very useful. As partners discuss each other's Gendergram, they gain a better understanding of why their partner acts as he or she does.
Much research on marital interaction focuses on the role of attribution--our personal theories or explanations for why our panner does as he or she does. Couples who make neutral or positive attributions about each other's behavior generally enjoy greater marital satisfaction than those who make negative attributions. The Gendergram can aid and abet this process. Understanding the messages our partner received while growing up and their lasting impact allows us to make more benign attributions of their behavior.
Take, for example, a situation marital therapists commonly encounter. Suppose that your partner frequently pursues you when you "need space." You may think he or she is overly needy, insecure, a "control freak." But if the Gendergram reveals that your partner has been abandoned by several significant people in life and believes that "men/women get close to you and then abandon you," he or she is probably experiencing distressing feelings that have been associated with abandonment in the past. The next time your partner pursues, you may want to ask him/her what he/she is feeling at the time and how the two of you can handle it differently.
When Susan and Alex sat down to discuss their Gendergrams, they were able to point to several sources of current difficulties. They each had different role expectations for husbands and fathers that crept into their struggle over the division of labor. The men and women in their respective families of origin expressed emotion and affection in differing ways. Yet in both of their families the emotional management of relationships was a task for the women--something Susan and Alex wanted to change in their own house. As a result of their discussion, they were less hostile to each other the next time they hit a snag on household tasks or making up after a fight. They agreed to view each other as having had different life experiences and different expectations. This helped them refrain from viewing the other as being difficult and negative on purpose. They divided up the household chores and agreed on standards of completion.
They settled on creating a role of "conflict manager," whose job it was to call time out when arguments heated up and ask what the other was thinking--without attacking the conflict manager. It was awkward at first, but they decided to alternate this role. Alex was conflict manager on even-numbered days, Susan on odd days.
The Gendergram lets spouses work as a team at deciding what roles/patterns/themes are good for the relationship and which are destructive. This helps a couple address difficult issues proactively, when they are calm, rather than react in the middle of an argument.
Of course, knowledge alone is insufficient to change behavior; otherwise no one would smoke and we'd all exercise and eat a healthy diet. More often than not it takes a pivotal experience to convince us to change. Nevertheless, gaining knowledge about our behavior is an important first step. The Gendergram gives couples information about their gender-related assumptions and behavior that they can examine, poke and prod, and make decisions about.
AFTERPLAY
We hope that after completing the Gendergram, people probe each gender-related assumption, value, and behavior and ask: Do I want to continue believing and/or acting this way? If not, what will I do to change? If so, how can I enhance this part of my life?
Tags:
1950's,
conflict,
contemporary society,
gender,
gender relations,
household,
interchange,
marriage,
pathways,
pizza,
relationship,
roles,
spheres,
third time,
women and men
