Josie
Josie
Jul 22, 2017 · 2 min read

Your point boils down to “men are incapable of handling strong emotions, so women should act accordingly”

This is the kind of mysoginistic thinking that’s incredibly harmful to men as well as women.

Let’s take a look at your points from a different perspective and come to a different conclusion:

We are all socialized to act certain ways. These socializations stick harder for some people rather than others, and that’s why a spectrum of “male” and “female” behaviors exist.

Many men grow up with significant pressure to avoid, repress, ignore complicated emotions that they experience. They internalize this behavior to be a part of their self identity. The “I don’t need to talk through my problems. I just fix them” type.

When men have grown up and have no experience dealing with, confronting, or overcoming strong emotions it can put a strain on relationships. When these couples go to therapy, there should be work done on teaching the man how to work on processing emotions in a healthy way and bringing consciousness to his avoidance and why he acts that way.

His partner can work in many roles to aid this: hold him accountable when she sees him avoiding, giving him space when the emotions get beyond his ability to handle at that point in time, making pointed examples of how she is processing her own emotions in life.

All of this treatment should be working towards a goal of having the partners on equal footing.

The original article has no goal of putting the partners on equal footing. It prescribes that the woman pull more emotional weight and give up on her needs to sacrifice for the man. But this harms them both and leads towards an unsustainable relationship. It continues to advance the idea that men and emotions don’t mix.

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    Josie

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    Josie

    We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance!