How all these differences in the brains of men and woman actually affect behavior is still controversial. But the fact that there are important differences is clear. The overall physical differences that we all see in female and male bodies are also found in their brains—and in the way they think.
Years of counseling experience has led me to believe that those differences help men and women make the wisest decisions in life when they respect those differences. When those differences are not respected, they create conflict and turmoil.
Men and Women Need Each Other’s Perspective
The differences in the structure and internal chemistry of human male and female brains affect the way they think. So it should be no surprise to anyone that men and women come to different conclusions about a wide variety of issues.
Throughout recorded history, because men are physically stronger than women and therefore have been able to dominate them, a man’s perspective has been regarded as correct (by men) and a woman’s perspective as inferior. Until recently, even most women have accepted that interpretation of their judgment.
Just think about it for a moment. Why were women not allowed to vote or hold public office here in America until 1920? It’s because the men who were in charge didn’t think that women had sufficient wisdom. Their evidence was that women often didn’t agree with their conclusions. And at the time, most women didn’t seem to object to that characterization.
But that’s no longer the case. We now know with certainty that women, on average, are just as smart as men. The two simply have somewhat different perspectives. In marriage, those differing perspectives often lead to conflict. And if a couple doesn’t know how to come to an agreement with each other without one running over the other, conflicts lead to fights rather than to resolution. The result has been that spouses in most marriages grow apart, lose their romantic love for each other, and either live independently of each other or divorce.
It doesn’t have to turn out that way, though. Husbands and wives can resolve conflicts the right way—with enthusiastic agreement. And the solutions they find as a result are far wiser than those originally considered by either spouse alone. Their differences in perspective complement each other to create a more complete understanding of the problems we all face in life. In other words, their joint agreement is the best resolution to their conflicts.
But there is an important caveat—they must hold each other’s perspective in the highest regard. They must each assume that they don’t have all of the answers and that their individual perspective may be somewhat flawed. They must value each other’s point of view as an essential piece of the puzzle. They must understand that mutual enthusiastic agreement is the only goal to conflict resolution that makes sense in marriage.
It’s the differences in the way men and women think that make them perfect partners in life. They need each other’s brains. The biggest mistake a couple can make is to view their differing perspectives with contempt and condescension. To joke about the way men and women view life differently is to ignore their most valuable asset—their differences. And it’s equally important for a couple to avoid the temptation to ignore their own perspective for the sake of the other.
Why Giving In Isn’t the Best Way to Care for Each Other
Most men and women know that they need each other in a host of ways: physically, emotionally, and intellectually. That dependence helps create an instinctive willingness to care for and protect each other that goes far beyond the way they treat same-sex relationships.
After speaking to a group of young mothers recently, I was asked this question: My husband frequently “gives in” and lets me have my way, but I know that he’s not really on board with it. I like when I get my way, but don’t always feel good about it afterward. How do I get him to open up to me more about how he really feels?
This woman’s husband may have agreed to do what made her happy because he cared about her and wanted her to be happy. She probably does the same for him every once in a while. They both had an instinct to care for each other at all costs, even if the cost is their own happiness.
But she was aware of a problem that this mutual care created for them. She liked to have her way, but deep down she knew that was not how they should be resolving conflicts.
Notice how she expressed her concern: she wanted him to “open up” so she could “know more about how he really feels.” In other words, their discussions never really got down to their differences in perspective. Instead, she’d express what she wanted and he’d either deny her request or go along with it. What she really wanted, though, was a meeting of the minds—two entirely different minds.
When a choice is to be made in my marriage, my instinct often tells me, If I really care about Joyce, I’ll give her whatever she wants. And the more I’m willing to sacrifice my own pleasure for hers, the more caring I am. And yet, I know that the wisest choices we can make are those that take both of our perspectives into account. They are equally valuable. So if I deny Joyce my perspective, I’m limiting our joint wisdom.
By simply giving his wife what she wanted without expressing his opinion, the husband of this young mother was depriving her of valuable information, and that made her feel very uncomfortable. It was more important to her to understand her husband than it was to get her way.
In marriage, a man and a woman should become a new entity, functioning not as two individuals but as a team. They should learn to plan together and to carry out that plan together. Having a cooperative and caring life partner gives us a great advantage over anything we could have been as an individual. And we’re much wiser than we could have ever been on our own. But it takes skill to work as a team—negotiating skill.
3
Why Win-Lose Doesn’t Work
Before I show you how to find the best solutions to the problems you face in marriage (win-win outcomes), I will introduce some of the most common solutions where one spouse wins while the other loses. These win-lose outcomes are common because not only are they much easier to find than win-win outcomes but they are also somewhat instinctive. We seem to be naturally drawn to those kinds of solutions.
While dating and during the first few months of marriage, Tony and Jodi, our couple from the first chapter, could not have imagined having a fight over who would care for their child at night. During those years, they had expressed an eager willingness to help each other whenever a problem would arise, even if it meant sacrificing their own personal interests. If they had obtained premarital counseling, and the counselor had asked how they would be handling such a conflict, they would both have offered to care for the child so the other could rest. The conflict might have been seen as who would do the caring, with both of them offering their services.
The Sacrifice Strategy
Sacrificing one’s own interests for the interests of someone you love is a time-honored solution to many problems in life. It’s regarded by many as being the ultimate form of care. The more spouses give sacrificially to each other, the more ideal their marriage is considered by some to be.
This ideal is described in the short story The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. An impoverished couple wants to give each other something significant for Christmas but have no money to do so. The wife wants to give her husband a watch fob to go with his prized possession, his watch. The husband wants to give his wife a comb for her hair, her crowning glory. So he sells his watch to buy the comb and she sells her hair to buy the fob. It’s a very sentimental story of sacrificial love, appropriate for the Christmas season when Christ was born to be the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.
But sacrifice has several pitfalls in marriage. First, sacrifice is usually done in secret. Instead of a couple working together on a solution to a problem, they work apart, keeping their plans to themselves. In the last chapter, I described the dilemma faced by a young mother. Her husband “gave in” and let her have her way. She liked getting her way, but she felt that in so doing, he was closing he
r out. She wanted him to open up so that she could know how he really felt. But personal sacrifice for the sake of someone you care for usually means that you don’t reveal your innermost feelings. He can’t give her what she wants and open up at the same time. Sacrifice usually prevents openness in marriage.
Second, sacrifice doesn’t lead to long-term solutions to marital problems. At best, it’s something that can be done only occasionally because the sacrificing spouse usually isn’t willing to make it a habit. But it sets a precedent that leads to unsustainable expectations. When one spouse’s gain is at the other spouse’s voluntary loss, what was voluntary one day easily translates into an expectation that’s demanded the next. For example, if on a special occasion a wife decides to sacrifice her own enjoyment, to have sex the way her husband wants to have it, sooner or later he’ll be pestering her to do it the same way again until she gives in. Eventually, she will dread the very thought of sex because it’s not done in a way that is enjoyable for her.
A third reason that sacrifice doesn’t work well in marriage is that reciprocation is expected. If I do something that’s unpleasant for me so that Joyce can have what she wants, I’ll be waiting for her to return the favor. And if she doesn’t do that—if I’m the only one making sacrifices—I’ll assume that she doesn’t care about me in the same way I care about her. Sooner or later my resentment will bubble to the surface.
In a mutually caring relationship such as marriage, sacrificing for each other doesn’t make much sense if both spouses really do care about each other. Why should I expect Joyce to suffer for my happiness? Why should she expect me to suffer for her? Neither of us should want the other to lose so that we can gain. It’s only if we are being selfish in an uncaring moment that we would expect the other to sacrifice. Mutual care means that both of us want each other to thrive and neither of us want the other to suffer.
So is there any place for sacrifice in marriage? I would suggest that it makes a great deal of sense to work together in joint sacrifice to accomplish a goal of mutual value. For example, my education was very difficult for both Joyce and me. We gave up many comforts and borrowed heavily to complete it. But my education was for our mutual advantage and eventually compensated for our joint sacrifice.
But joint sacrifice does not require secrecy. It’s done in the open with both spouses knowing what will be involved, and what they will receive for their effort. It also has a well-defined ending—the sacrifice is not expected to last indefinitely. Finally, since the sacrifice is mutually agreed upon, requires joint effort, and benefits both spouses, there is no expectation of reciprocity.
So when I warn couples to avoid personal sacrifice, I want them to understand that, as tempting as it is for a mutually caring couple, it’s a win-lose strategy. Don’t do it if one gains at the expense of the other.
But if a couple can agree that a mutual short-term sacrifice for each of them can achieve a mutual long-term advantage for both of them, such a plan can actually be helpful to their marriage as long as basic emotional needs are met during the time of sacrifice.
The Dictator Strategy
While the sacrifice strategy for resolving marital conflicts may seem on the surface to be the ultimate form of care, most other strategies with win-lose goals are not at all altruistic. Instead of “I’ll lose so that you can win,” they turn it around to be “You’ll lose so that I can win.” They’re downright selfish. There should be no doubt that these strategies that lead to win-lose outcomes should be avoided. I’ll begin my analysis with the traditional husband-in-charge approach that dominated society for millennia. I call it the dictator strategy.
Are You a Dictator?
If you’re not sure if you are a dictator, here are a few test questions. Do you ever tell your spouse what to do? Does a refusal trigger a disrespectful or even an angry reaction from you? Do you let your spouse know that there will be consequences for noncompliance? Do you require obedience from your spouse in some situations?
An even better test for dictatorship is to ask your spouse those questions about you. “Do I ever tell you what to do?” It’s easy to see the dictator strategy in use when your spouse is the one using it. But when you use it yourself to try to get something accomplished, the fact that it’s controlling and abusive is much more difficult to appreciate. Someone must take charge or the job won’t get done! It’s easy to justify.
For thousands of years it was customary for husbands to make all of the major decisions in marriage. A husband may have discussed the issue with his wife to gain her perspective, but that wasn’t a given. And in the end his will usually prevailed.
But over the past few decades, this custom has changed, at least in most Western cultures. Consider for a moment the comedy program Father Knows Best. Can you imagine a show ever being given that name today? It originated on radio in 1949 with the father portrayed as lord of his kingdom. As the radio program morphed into television, the father’s role softened, but he was still the boss right up through the last show in 1960.
By the time a similar comedy concept, All in the Family, appeared (1971–1983), comparison between the old and the new in marriage was the major premise. Archie Bunker’s traditional dominant role contrasted with his modern son-in-law Michael’s weak and confused role as husband. “Those Were the Days,” the title of the show’s theme song, made it clear that in Archie’s view life sure was simpler when men ruled.
The changes in our culture that gave women the same rights as men were both long overdue and yet fraught with difficulty. For years, husbands had expected to be dictators. They would make the final decisions regarding the family, and their wives would dutifully obey them. In fact, obedience was a key promise in their wife’s wedding vow.
But today you’ll rarely hear the word “obey” mentioned in a woman’s vows. Most often, today’s wedding vows reflect equality for both spouses in marriage. Old habits, and traditions, do not die quickly, however. And to this day, many husbands keep trying to tell their wives what to do.
Benevolent Dictators
When a husband uses the dictator strategy to resolve marital conflicts, he usually doesn’t intend for it to hurt his wife and children. In fact, he’ll typically argue that his decision is ultimately in the best interest of the entire family.
But even if a husband makes personal sacrifices as part of the process, most modern wives don’t want their husbands to make unilateral decisions. They want to be equal partners in their lives together, and that includes decision-making. If a husband tries to force a decision upon his wife without consulting her, she finds it to be controlling and abusive. She doesn’t want to live under the absolute authority of a husband.
Besides, what may seem benevolent to a husband may not be considered benevolent from a wife’s perspective. If a final decision is not mutually agreeable to both spouses and instead is made unilaterally by the husband, it’s very likely that the wife’s interests are not being fully considered. I’ve witnessed many decisions made by husbands that were intended to be in the best interest of the family but turned into disasters. If the wife’s reluctance to go forward would have put on the brakes, the family would not have suffered. A couple’s decisions are usually much wiser when they both agree on a course of action.
Partnership is a key concept in modern marriages, and most women expect to make joint decisions with their husbands. Benevolent or not, a husband who expects to make all of the final decisions in marriage is often viewed as arrogant and disrespectful. After all, many women would argue, what right does a man have to make the final decisions? Isn’t a woman’s judgment just as wise—or sometimes even wiser?
Wives Taking Charge
In the 1970s, women were encouraged to attend assertiveness training classes to resist the dictators in their lives. The gist of what they learned was to say “no” without having to explain why. At that time, many women still thought that they had to obey orders, especially the orders of their husbands. And a class teachi
ng them how to say “no” was viewed as a first step in helping them gain control over their lives.
Today, most wives are beyond knowing how to say “no.” In fact, many have now caught on to the traditional negotiating technique long employed by husbands—dictatorship. They’ve turned the tables by becoming the dictators themselves.
In decades past, a bossy wife would have been the butt of ridicule, with very uncomplimentary names ascribed to the woman who took charge in her family. But today, that’s changed and the same woman may even be seen as a hero to some. No one bosses her around—she’s the one who does the bossing.
Some husbands of such women have tried to accommodate their wife’s leadership. Instead of challenging their wife’s aggressive approach to problems, they try to simply fit in. When there is a conflict of opinion, these husbands capitulate to maintain peace. The adage “When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” is taken to heart, and they do whatever they can to keep their wife happy, even at their own expense. Maybe that was what the husband was doing in my earlier example—when he “gave in” to his wife’s wishes, he wasn’t sacrificing, he was capitulating.
Dueling Dictators
Some wives submit to the demands of their husbands, and some husbands do the same when their wives take charge. But a far more common response of husbands to dictator wives and wives to dictator husbands is to fight back. Arguments between dueling dictators are now so common in marriage that therapists have resorted to encouraging couples to “fight fair.” Trying to resolve marital conflicts without fighting is often viewed not as a legitimate option but rather as wishful thinking.
He Wins, She Wins Page 2
