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msagaraI'm still chewing over the issue of 'settling'.
My mother, and my aunts, understand what the word "settle" means, but the colloquial phrase, as used by Gottlieb, and understood by both me and the people who posted on this thread here, was not familiar to them. They were, of course, expected to marry; they were, of course, expected not to have sex until they were married; they were expected to be good girls, and they had the usual contemptible and completely enraging words for the not good girls.
(My mother and I had a number of arguments, debates, and all-out screaming fights when I was a young teenager because she'd raised me to be relatively practical and relatively logical, and some of those phrases struck me as sexist, hugely gender-biased, and entirely unfair. My father would very quietly pick up the newspaper and head out to the living room when we talked about these things because a) he had no opinions to offer and b) the words could easily become incendiary.)
But my mother's generation didn't use the term "settling" in the same way. And it occurs to me that there are reasons for that, one being that women were not considered capable of their own upkeep away from their parent's house; marriage wasn't a matter of romantic love; it was a matter of necessity, like finding a job. This, by the way, is not the way it was ever presented to me; this is hindsight. It was important to my mother that we all marry for love.
Yes, that was a digression.
What I am still wondering, however, is why "settling" has no real male counterpart. I asked my husband about it, and he understands and recognizes the term -- but it's a term that women use, and they apply it to other women. So I asked him what the male equivalent was. There was some silence and some thought, and then he admitted that no male equivalent came to mind.
So I asked him why.
He said that men in general don't talk to each other about relationships or relationship issues; they don't talk about their marriages, their wives, or, once they're no longer teenage boys, their sex life. If they're talking about relationship issues, they're almost always talking to women.
So... why is this? Is it just the cultural context, that leftover conditioning that still requires women to be in relationships to be happy? Men are often lonely; is it just the social pressure not to talk about these things that prevents them from entering the same types of conversations, or are these conversations inherently pointless or boring?
My mother, and my aunts, understand what the word "settle" means, but the colloquial phrase, as used by Gottlieb, and understood by both me and the people who posted on this thread here, was not familiar to them. They were, of course, expected to marry; they were, of course, expected not to have sex until they were married; they were expected to be good girls, and they had the usual contemptible and completely enraging words for the not good girls.
(My mother and I had a number of arguments, debates, and all-out screaming fights when I was a young teenager because she'd raised me to be relatively practical and relatively logical, and some of those phrases struck me as sexist, hugely gender-biased, and entirely unfair. My father would very quietly pick up the newspaper and head out to the living room when we talked about these things because a) he had no opinions to offer and b) the words could easily become incendiary.)
But my mother's generation didn't use the term "settling" in the same way. And it occurs to me that there are reasons for that, one being that women were not considered capable of their own upkeep away from their parent's house; marriage wasn't a matter of romantic love; it was a matter of necessity, like finding a job. This, by the way, is not the way it was ever presented to me; this is hindsight. It was important to my mother that we all marry for love.
Yes, that was a digression.
What I am still wondering, however, is why "settling" has no real male counterpart. I asked my husband about it, and he understands and recognizes the term -- but it's a term that women use, and they apply it to other women. So I asked him what the male equivalent was. There was some silence and some thought, and then he admitted that no male equivalent came to mind.
So I asked him why.
He said that men in general don't talk to each other about relationships or relationship issues; they don't talk about their marriages, their wives, or, once they're no longer teenage boys, their sex life. If they're talking about relationship issues, they're almost always talking to women.
So... why is this? Is it just the cultural context, that leftover conditioning that still requires women to be in relationships to be happy? Men are often lonely; is it just the social pressure not to talk about these things that prevents them from entering the same types of conversations, or are these conversations inherently pointless or boring?
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-13 07:07 pm (UTC)This I definitely have seen, and now that you mention it, I do think it skews slightly by gender. There are other factors as well -- but there's less reticence, I think, among my female friends over the small details (i.e. My Husband who Forgot to take out the Garbage.)
That's what annoyed me about Gottlieb, honestly. She treated her friends, who just needed to vent about the usual everyday annoyances that come from living with someone for years, as if they'd "settled." Has she never had a relationship? Even the best of them, between Mr. and Ms. Right For Each Other, have stresses and points of conflict. Sometimes people need to vent safely to their friends.
I have to think a little bit about this, because you're absolutely right, but that's not what I took out of the article.
Troubled Relationships
Date: 2008-03-17 07:13 am (UTC)For me, and most men I know, if I had a problem with our relationship so grating that I had to openly complain to others and big enough that I had to put an emotional stress on my wife and also demanded immediate time and attention towards the problem. Then the problem would have to be a big one. I wouldn't be mainly looking to share and understand all the issues involved. Although I'd accept that, as a potentially necessary step, in order to get what I was mainly wanting. Which is in short the problem fixed and co-jointly important, not revisted. Ideally not ever again but likely I'd settle for a year or more without revisitation.
Now my wife gets very mad at me sometimes, because she will raise to my attention a problem or complaint and I'll do my best to fix that problem. Then move on, saying its fixed to the best of our abilities (assuing it really is as far as I can tell). And she honestly doesn't understand my frustration with going over the same issue again and again.
To me if there is a problem and its not fixed, and we keep revisiting it again and To her she is sharing and undersanding and working on the problem and in her mind that's important because it means things aren't getting worse and are most likely getting better.
again it then becomes a real danger. Meaning we have a bigger problem than I thought and a potentially unsolvable one. Which to my way of thinking and feeling is a bigger threat to my future harmony and continuing relationship than several complaints all of which occured in a row, one after the other, but which have all been successfully resolved.
I think in a general sense women want to share and understand and work through a relationship problem and men want to fix and resolve and end a relationship problem. If the man is unwilling to put some time and effort into understanding the problem then the women isn't going to be happy, despite all the fixing in the world. But by the same token if the woman is unwilling to eventually seek closure and drop an issue, then the man will be unhappy, no matter how well he understand the problem and all the improvments that have been made on the issue.
In short the way I see it, is that men have an. If its not broke don't fix it way of looking at things. Meaning unless its a threat to the relationship its not a big problem and doesn't need to be truely stressed on. However if there is a problem then it needs fixing or else its a big problem and a threat to the relationship.
But hey that's just me and what I've seen. I could very well be all wrong and way off regarding things in general. Always keeping in mind that each and every individual is a special and unique butterfly, unable to be neatly categorized and boxed into a blanket generalization.
The Deposed King