In the practice of therapy, particularly couples therapy, I often help patients navigate and negotiate how gender works in their marriage or romantic relationships. Last year, gender roles came up in the public sphere due to the presidential election, particularly in response to Donald Trump’s surreptitiously recorded remarks about women with the television host Billy Bush.
In her article “What Women Really Think of Men” in the New York Times, Irin Carmon not only revisits Trump’s misogynistic attitudes, but also analyzes his supporters’ flippant descriptions of his statements as “a guy thing” or “locker room talk” to show how “when we declare that men will always be brutes and women can only shrug from on high, we engage in what President George W. Bush once called the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Carmon writes, “…it does women, and society, no favors to grouse about female superiority as a way to let men off the hook.”
I absolutely agree. When we set a standard for men that is problematically low whether in national politics or in our own relationships, everyone loses.
How Men Talk About Women
I wrote about my response to the Billy Bush/Trump tape extensively in our collective therapist conversation about the presidential campaign (before Trump’s election). My first reaction to the tape was, "Oh, that's disgusting, how could they just talk like that." When the Right explained the tape by, "That's how men talk,” I thought, "Wait, I don't talk that way." And dozens of men in public life (many of them with legit man's-man cred) said, "That's not the way I talk! That's not how my friends talk!" Similarly, women pointed out that men in their lives didn’t talk that way either.
However, the way Billy and Donald spoke on that bus is exactly how men talk when they think no one is listening. Were there views expressed in that conversation that many men would never express and have never expressed? Absolutely (myself included). But, beyond the shock value, the reality is men do talk in hurtful, small-minded ways about women. Men also assume all sorts of privileges in their relationships based on gender.
I raise this issue as a man not to denigrate men but to appreciate that men–myself included–have been raised in a broad culture that sets low expectations of us. We can do better. That said, none of us are immune from these ideals and the accompanying expectation that women will deal with it, shrug or perhaps “blow up at us.” (We’ve all been well-trained on how to ignore this–pull out the b-word or a reference to hormones and you’re all set!).
I do believe that most men, whatever their conflicts, are on board with (or can be won over to) understanding how much we and our relationships lose by relying on “how good we have it.”
Raising Demands In Your Relationship
I think a lot about how gender roles–and low expectations–get expressed in relationships between men and women in the context of their seeking help in couples therapy. The language I often use is related to demands. It’s tricky because demand can connote a sort of fist-pounding, authority-driven engagement. But, what we’re talking about is expressing wants, but grabbing attention in a particular way that says, “Hey, I’m here and I demand that I’m listened to. Our relationship needs this. I need this.”
One of the privileges men have is that the very rules of disagreement were made by men, for men. Men, therefore, aren't just challenged to make more room for women in their discourse, but to be open to changing the very form of that discourse. We have to fight and disagree differently. I talk with women about “getting madder sooner,” meaning raise their demands before their frustration hits a boiling point. I talk with men about moving toward their partner’s frustration so their partner feels those demands can be heard and acted upon.
Gender Expectations In Couples Therapy
Men and women bring frustrations and complaints about one another into their therapy. Everyone has them. What I find, however, is that what men and women do with those complaints differs a great deal. Women tend not to ask men to do things that would make them uncomfortable. Men would have to grow or do something outside of their emotional comfort zone. They might have to do something they don’t know how to do and therefore, need to seek help, take a risk or enter a vulnerable space.
Of course, there are endless dynamics at play with any particular couple. I will say that having worked with dozens of couples, this is a trend across race, class and independent of whether or not a guy is fairly progressive or a woman is fairly assertive in other parts of her life. There are exceptions, of course–not everyone who comes to therapy needs help with this. But, it is common.
The Reluctance of Men To Be Challenged And Women to Challenge Is Particularly Unfair for Women
It should be said the reluctance of men to be challenged and women to challenge is a particularly unfair situation for women. If women just live with gender norms that are not working for them, they live with inequity and an imbalanced partnership. If they are angry and hostile, that’s a bummer and their partner is always mad or hides. The third choice is also unfair: recognize that men of entitlement need to grow up in these ways and invest in helping them grow. That doesn’t mean feeling sorry for them or being gentle in that approach. Being demanding is vital here, but being demanding and losing your shit are very different things.
Couples Have To Create Their Own Terms In The Relationship
No couple is immune from rules and expectations based on gender. Many are implicit, making them in some ways more difficult to change. In practical terms, the primary intervention is to name the influence of culture on married or romantic relationships. I often point out with couples that part of the challenge in growing their relationship is that both of them showed up with a profound set of influences from the world writ large.
While this might sound like a 60’s-era leftist propaganda, but in order for couples to create a relationship where both people feel heard, and where everyone has the space to articulate and meet their needs, couples need to be willing to create their own terms in the relationship. These terms may look quite different from the implicit expectations they have about how men and women should relate.
Learning How To Hear and How to Be Heard
The task is one for both men and women to take on. Men need to learn to hear (complaints, frustrations, expressions of needs) and women need to demand that they be heard. We can't just shrug at men's difficulties in hearing women. They exist. As a consequence, men and women both have hard work. It seems to me women would be justified in finding this unfair, but it is nonetheless the case.
For women, the work is finding ways to be direct and to not take care of their partner’s feelings so much when they're upset with them. It is essential to raise issues when they're happening or soon after.
Men need to learn how to listen, which, for most men I work with in couples therapy, starts with getting used to the idea that they maybe aren't such good listeners. They need to do more than say some variation of "What? She should just say something if she's upset,” but rather, seek an understanding of the ways they may not make that so easy.
Both partners need to go beyond just being more demanding within a predetermined set of rules, but rather examine those rules: How did these set terms of communication get built? What would you be giving up to reorganize those rules? Whom do they serve? Are the rules of engagement keeping you stuck in the status quo?
