The humble man and the confident woman are the two people you'll find when you encounter a couple that has survived and thrived together over time. Humility is difficult for men, easily confused with weakness. Confidence is challenging for women, even those who would appear to be sure of themselves. Each day in my
therapy practice, I see people whose relationships are deteriorating because a man has difficulty with being humble and a woman is challenged by lack of self-confidence. I, like most men, have had to fight my own battles against a well-defended and groundless arrogance. Finding and sustaining the elusive balance between pride and self-confidence has been a challenge for me both as a therapist and a husband. In my work with clients, I try to help everyone who comes to see me become more balanced: humble yet confident, modest yet proud.
Interestingly, recruiters offer job seekers similar advice based on their experience of gender specific strengths and challenges. Each year the Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive business-school survey asks recruiters about a variety of issues, among them the difference between male and female MBAs. Among the many questions considered in the survey are variables in each gender's inborn assets. In a Wall Street Journal article by Robert Alsop, he reports that the advice recruiters tend to give men is to be more humble and collaborative, listen better to other points of view and stop taking credit for other people's accomplishments. The recommendation offered by recruiters to women is to "toot their own horns," and build confidence. "Female M.B.A.s," Alsop suggests, "have a bias to nurturing and team building and male M.B.A.s to a more analytically driven focus on success and independence. My advice is that both should develop more well-rounded skills."
Another way of framing the above equation is to note that an out of control ego can be a serious relationship buster. Lack of ego can be equally disastrous. On the one side too much ego prevents humility and too little ego prevents confidence. Arrogance is the opposite of humility and excessive self-importance is synonymous with what's referred to as an oversized ego. An out of control ego can hurt you in any area of your life. Ego can be helpful to men in business and in love, but when a man's ego is out control, he'll fail in both areas of life.
A central part of the problem here is that men have difficulty understanding the word humility. In the dictionary, we can clearly see why humility is inherently undesirable to many men. The word is defined only in negatives: lowliness, meekness, and submissiveness. In fact, pride is listed as the antonym to humility. If, however, we define humility in a positive manner, we can call it the virtue of knowing your own limitations, the strength of admitting you're not always right, the knowledge that you are not God and that other people have something to teach you. This doesn't diminish what you can teach others but, in fact, broadens it because it comes from generosity as opposed to contempt. The wisdom to not know is essential to a good and loving relationship. Without humility it is impossible to feel and express gratitude, appreciation, hope, or empathy for others. In a narcissistic world where so many people crave admiration, practicing humility can be elusive.
Most men I see in therapy want to improve their relationships with their partners and if they learn to understand and practice humility, they can surely achieve that goal. In the well-known book "Good to Great" Jim Collins identifies humility and modesty as the central quality that allows a CEO to achieve greatness in business. The same holds true for marriage and any other form of loving partnership. When a man has the strength to acknowledge that he might not be right about an issue, that he may be smart but has things to learn from other people, particularly his partner, conflicts can become resolved and a relationship like a business can go from "Good to Great."
