Hello to all from our new residence! Yes, Dear Reader, you are now corresponding with a whole new base of operations. I’m quite excitd to be here, the apartment is wonderful. It feels more like a house, it’s in a neighborhood, and we’re already seeing exciting possibilities for interior decoration. All told, it’s hard to argue. Still, there are several minor downsides:
1. Longer commute for me. Which sucks, but it was always inevitable. As Corelyn sagely put it, “It’s not like we’re ever going to move closer to USC.”
2. Lack of on-site laundry. Damn it!
3. No longer walking distance from GameStop. The crushing blow. The ultimate sacrifice. Now that I have tasted Heaven, Dear Reader, can I ever return to the land of the living?
All kidding aside, the move is an incredibly positive thing and we’re both happy it took place.
Weirdly, though, I’m not in a good mood. I feel very lonely. I have to do a lot of balancing of my time between Corelyn, her friends, my old friends, AND my new USC friends. This is difficult to do, and there’s a sort of “neither fish nor fowl” thing that happens trying to divide yourself up betwixt all of that. My USC people are great, but none of them are married, and they are more or less ably to commit entirely to their relationships with one another. I, meanwhile, desperate to stay in the loop, must juggle them with all of this other crap, and somehow I end up feeling like I don’t really belong anywhere.
Also, the move was originally going to happen a week from now, and the timetable just leaped forward out of nowhere. It’s a little jarring to be suddenly somewhere else, especially when you’re driving home from places you’ve regularly gone and you suddenly remember to drive the other way. I haven’t really had time to deal with this feeling, because I’m always rushing around, trying to get a dozen things accomplished. But after Corelyn goes lights-out, and I’m still awake with restless energy, it settles like dawn mist, and suddenly I don’t know why I feel so…antsy.
I don’t really have a proper mechanism yet for informing Corelyn that I need attention. She, like most people, gets sort of tongue-tied if you simply say, “I’d like to be the center of attention for a while,” and everything else I try to make this happen tends to float by her. It’s also very difficult to express this when you’re male, since there’s so much stereotypical crap that’s expected of you, and there’s so many thousands of American men who live emotionally crippled lives trying to make these archetypes true. I’ve known many guys who didn’t have a clue how to express their feelings, but I’ve never met a single one who didn’t have them. Watch any of us carefully, you’ll see the same fluctuations you find in anyone else. Now I normally consider myself above all that crap, but it still hampers me when I’m trying to be honest.
I’ve heard about some interesting studies about this, although nothing conclusive yet. I read about some case study work that was done on unfaithful husbands (not that there’s any excuse for being one), and scientists have noticed a fascinating trend: ego neglect at home. Many wives, it seem, come to genuinely believe that their husbands don’t need emotional nurturing, because they are consistently told so, so they just stop trying. They don’t wonder if they’ve complimented their men recently, or if something they said was insensitive, or anything like that, and then an ugly thing happens. These same men who spend years trying to convince their wives that they are made of stone start feeling the effects of being emotionally malnourished. Suddenly they don’t feel smart, or sexy, or interesting around their spouses anymore. And since they are actively pretending not to have feelings, they decide to seek out a woman who will make them feel special.
The great hypocrisy of this situation is that these husbands are now punishing their wives for not doing things they encouraged them not to do. It’s all fun and games when you’re watching “Home Improvement,” but the price of not separating TV sitcoms from actual life is steep. Don’t get me wrong, men absolutely will fight you tooth and nail before they’ll open up about their feelings, but there’s a really big difference between emotional stupidity and emotional absence. I believe the average American male has the former, not the latter. We’re not really that different from women, hell some studies suggest we even have hormonal cycles (I’m not sure if that’s definitively proven), and we want all the same things the opposite sex does. The problem is, we want them without asking for them, or admitting we wanted them in the first place, and if we receive them we do little to encourage more. Many wives who are seeking to be there for their husbands must toil away thanklessly.
The problems this has caused are deep and awful, the entire Western dating apparatus is not prepared for the emotional needs of a guy, and we have deliberately rigged it that way. Think about it: is there any male equivalent for receiving flowers? Are there hilarious stereotypes about what you must never say to your boyfriend? The way we’ve got it now, women need the nurturing and the thoughtfulness and the affirmation, and men just need sex. Of course, there are always plenty of morons who will cheer “Hell yeah!” at that statement, basking in that special warm glow only attained when cramming yourself into a sharp, narrow stereotype. But if you think about it, their motives betray them: they conspicuously agree because they want you to affirm that they are strong, masculine men. Even when we claim we feel nothing, we’re revealing exactly the opposite.
I have had many conversations with girlfriends and wives who are utterly blindsided by the fact that some casual thing they said hurt their man’s feelings. They won’t know why this dude is angry, they’ll describe some casual remark they made, and I’ll politely point out that it was probably hurtful. You can tell they just have no training to even consider this possibility, they furrow their brows and say, “I guess…” When I was growing up, I learned from painful experience with my sisters or girlfriends that “you just don’t say blank” or “women are sensitive about blank,” and it was invaluable. The opposite sex, however, is utterly denied this luxury, they are constantly kept at arm’s length by boys who assure them, “I don’t care, I’m a guy, we just like sex.” This, I think, is a costly delusion. It’s even perpetuated by the school systems, which pretend that adolescent males suffering through puberty are just tough or something, and don’t need guidance or support.
There’s a weird reversal that occurs here: I think women are often neglectful of their significant others’ emotional needs, but the fault for that lies exclusively with men. I’ve dated a fair amount of girls in my life, and none of them were ever really comfortable “handling” my feelings, because every time a situation occurred where they needed to try, they had to spend time getting used to the fact that it was necessary at all. Everything in the way men are considered (by women or other men alike) seems to break down to behavior: he acted this way, now let me find the reason, as if Newton’s Law applies to everything we do. When there is no obvious reason, a lot of confusion ensues, and we men just sit there, denying our partners the thing they need the most: honest feedback.
(I’m going to use an example where Corelyn did something I did not like, but in all fairness, my wife is far and away the best handler of men I have ever known. She understands masculine thinking so well that she can often pinpoint what she’s doing to irritate me when I cannot.)
I’ll give you a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Corelyn has broached the subject of me needing new jeans several times, and the first few times she did, she would comment that my old ones were “tight around the waist” and “didn’t fit right anymore” as if it were the simplest thing in the world. Even at the time, it struck me as funny how completely unacceptable this conversation would have been with reversed roles. We’re trained so that such a double-standard seems reasonable, why should men care about these things? But after she had done this, and I had said nothing, I noticed my behavior was different towards her for days afterwards, much to her infinite chagrin. I was unconfident, and I vented it into being argumentative and pissy, and every time she asked what was wrong with me, I exasperated both of us because I did not know.
When I finally figured out that I didn’t like her saying that, I got an opportunity to correct her because she said it again. Her reaction was honestly just confusion:
“I don’t understand,” she said, looking at me with a frown.
“I just…you’re calling me fat there. I know I’ve gained some weight, I’d rather not have it pointed out.”
“I’m not calling you fat! You just need new jeans!”
“Because I’m getting fat.”
“No, it’s not because of that, you’re just growing!”
“But you specifically pointed out the waist line. It’s not like the pants are too short, are they? They’re just too slim.”
At this point she kind of conceded…kind of. She just couldn’t understand what was so wrong with her saying I needed new jeans. I found this moment to be a priceless gem, because for the first time ever, a woman walked in a man’s shoes about this kind of thing. Do you think we’re any less confused the first time we learn about these little things we’re not supposed to say? I’ve gotten in trouble for saying things that implied a girl needed new clothing. Men have to check their speech like a chess wizard who examines every play at three moves ahead.
She insisted that nothing derogatory was on her mind when she made her statements, so she didn’t think it was fair to take offense to them, but my response was utterly cynical: “Join the club.” Most guys who gets in trouble for this kind of thing wants to make that same argument, and it tends to falls on deaf ears. I once got in trouble with her for not noticing a new haircut. Does anyone really believe I was intending to neglect her when I did that? Am I off the hook just because I didn’t mean to not notice? Not on your life.
Now my point here is actually different from what you might assume: I think women like Corelyn are totally innocent. Consider how long and roundabout my feedback loop was: it took me weeks to inform her that a single comment had a simple effect; when I missed the haircut, I knew it in under an hour. And let’s be honest, a lot of men would have never told her, because they might never have figured it out themselves. How can anyone develop a set of tools and regulations with this little give and take? I know for a fact that countless wives and girlfriends have to drag their significant others to therapy, because they are desperate to open an emotional dialogue, because they want to find out how they can make a man feel affirmed or loved, and would be thrilled to discover they needed such things.
A pastor at a church I attended once said that if sex isn’t ten percent of a relationship, it’s ninety percent of the problem. Without haggling over the numbers, I think that’s incredibly true, and it applies to the emotional needs of a man. Compliments, affirmations, encouragements–these things just need to exist, they don’t need to be overwhelming. I’m a pretty sensitive guy, and even I just lock up and avoid my wife when I should involve her in what’s going on in my head. I think men as a gender need to shape up and start being honest. It doesn’t mean you have to cry all the time or something, but I’m so sick and tired of acting like a numbskull to convince everyone I have a penis. If there are men out there who really do just want sex and don’t care about anything else, then those people are boderline sociopaths. I don’t want to be like them.