Robert Solley
Jul 25, 2017 · 1 min read

Thanks for your comment Devorah. I can think of a few possibilities for this. One is that some men may be in relationships where they feel criticized a lot overall (and/or may have felt this with one or both parents), and so their antennae are on high alert. This is a particular example of negativity bias, which we all have in some fashion and I’ve written about elsewhere.

The other possibility is a theory that I haven’t heard much of lately and can’t tie to any research but was developed by a feminist psychoanalyst named Nancy Chodorow. One of her ideas was that while girls can continue to identify with their mothers into adulthood, boys have to separate more completely from their mothers in order to identify with, and become, men. It’s possible that in this process they may inadvertently feel some level of rejection from their mothers (even unconsciously), leading to a sensitivity to criticism, especially from women. Speculative for sure, but an intriguing idea.

    Robert Solley

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