An essay by contributor Pearl. If you would like to submit your own content, please email amerikanercontributions@proton.me
You may have heard that the future is female. It’s hard to say what the future may or may not be but the present is definitely female. Men are receiving fewer college degrees. Women are pushing their way into a variety of lucrative white collar careers – sometimes only to leave when they get pregnant. Men are having less sex and participating less in society. There is no question that it is not the best time in history to be a man.
There are innumerable reasons that this is not good but we are specifically discussing the interplay between genders and for the purposes of a balanced relationship, the current state of men is not good for any of us.
Women want men that they respect and admire. It is no secret that masculinity is an integral piece of the attraction puzzle. Status, often through a career, is a driving force in women’s attraction to men. Quite reasonably, men and women make the logical assumption that a man’s job is a display of masculinity. So what happens when women are outperforming men in academia and taking men’s jobs via diversity quota? We end up with a world of women whose status is higher than the men in their dating pool and no one is happy.
To paraphrase a man who had it all figured out, “A man is not his job. He is not the balance in his bank account”.
It is when men and women attempt to compete on the career playing field that relationships implode. If the sole marker of a man’s masculinity is his job and his woman is herself a Career Gal™ (as so many believe themselves to be) then what is there to respect, to submit to. If your job is what makes a man a man, what is he when the dox comes? The layoffs?
As a woman, I cannot tell men how to be men. I can tell men that they must be more than their job. I can tell women that they must seek men who are more than their job.
My husband sees far. He has a vision that guides our family. His chores around the house are the dirty jobs and the manual labor that I am ill equipped to do. He is strong and hard. His work, or lack thereof, has never been a strain on our relationship because that is not the foundation of our dynamic.
Men, be more than your job. Women seek out men who are more than their job. These days, a job is ephemeral. Skills, strength and character cannot be taken away so easily.
“I love him but…“
Stop me if you’ve heard this before:
“I’ve been with this guy for X amount of time. These are all the things that are going wrong in the relationship. He’s doing x, y and z and I want to change that. I love him very much how do I change him so our relationship is perfect?”
I cringe every time I hear “I love him very much” and I have a secret for you.
Love isn’t enough.
Men have two things that they require like air: respect and sex.
Don’t misunderstand, love is important and everyone wants to be loved. However, your love must be demonstrated through the lens of respect. Furthermore, respect is often necessary for women to feel attraction to a man. After all, who wants to let someone into her bed who she doesn’t respect? Who wants to care for a manchild for the rest of her life?
Love changes over time. In the beginning, infatuation is a fire and it’s all consuming. These feelings fade as a relationship becomes comfortable. Love deepens and is a shared bond that can sustain you for life. That love requires you to think highly of the man you love. It goes beyond hormones and passion.
That love is also easily confused with habit and attachment when a relationship is on the line.
Often you hear “I love him very much” along with a list of his faults. What that really means is: “I’m very comfortable in this relationship and I don’t want to start over”.
You can care deeply about someone and not respect them. If you do not respect a man the relationship isn’t sustainable. So instead of attempting to identify “love” for a man, ask “is there respect there”. Does your gut tell you that you would follow him into a fire? Forgo your path to join him on his? Will you proudly show off your relationship to friends and family without omission? Do you think he knows where he’s going in life and will you stay by his side through thick and thin?
Love isn’t enough. There must also be respect for the relationship to survive.