Four Things That Emasculate Men That Really Shouldn’t
Confidence is calm and secure, not loud and defensive.
I grew up in a military culture that taught me important lessons about character and discipline. It also instilled a lot of toxic ideas about masculinity, and what being a man is and isn’t.
My upbringing isn’t all that different from that of many other men. We tend to cling to a number of bad preconceptions that hurt our happiness and relationships. Here are four.
The threat of a high earning partner
One of my good friends recently said, “My wife can’t make more money than me!”
She’d recently gotten a huge raise and went from making $10K less than him to making $20K more. I gave him a hard time about it, “Weren’t you just complaining about your marital finances? Isn’t this a good thing?”
And as much as I’d like to sit here and say it would never bother me if my partner made more money, I don’t know for certain that I’m totally immune. A big driver in the failure of my previous marriage was a differential gap in our earnings, with her making more money than me. It became a bone of contention (there is quite a bit of internalized sexism — even in women).
