I never met a woman who didn’t readily admit that she
stayed in a bad marriage too long. I have asked many recently out of
dysfunctional marriages why they remained in them even though they weren’t
working. While their answers varied the most often repeated one is that they
hoped their husbands would somehow realize the error of their ways and decide
to become better men.
This just doesn’t square with what I learned working with
men over 15 years because a man never changes his behavior just because a woman
asks him to. No amount of coaxing or cajoling a man makes a whit of difference.
A woman will unlikely convince a man that he is the problem even if he is. No
matter what his issues are, anger, abandonment, isolation from other men, etc,
a man will only decide to work on himself when the pain caused by his
dysfunctional behavior becomes so unbearable for him that he can’t stand it any
longer. Sadly, this awakening usually comes after his marriage failed. A savvy
woman he meets after his failed marriage knows immediately whether or not he
has his emotional life together because she knows how and what to ask him.
Every day I read postings written by women who are
exasperated by their husband’s behavior. His anger or his lack of interest in talking
about their marriage is the most common complaint from women who can’t come to
grips with the fact that his behavior is out of their control.
What many women don’t know is that men don’t talk with
them about their relationships because they simply don’t know how. The playing
field that is the man/woman dialogue is so tilted against most men that the
conversation is over as soon as it begins. It loses all meaning when a woman
talks about how she feels about the relationship and the man responds with what
he thinks about it. Anything beyond their opening statements is superfluous
because they are using entirely different languages. Speaking from the heart
and speaking from the head are at opposite ends of the dialogue spectrum and no
amount of time on that playing field is going to yield much of value.
So a woman who hangs in with an unconscious man while
embracing the fantasy that he will one day wake up and appreciate how terrific
she really is and work on his issues is just wasting her time. In a decade and
a half working with men I learned that few if any men knew how to access their
emotions and even fewer could talk about them.
Women should accept that men aren’t going to change,
aren’t going to talk about their emotions and aren’t going to become better
husbands until they sit down with other like-minded men and talk about their
demons. Men can help other men learn how to talk about their relationships in
language that is constructive and helpful.
A woman who stays in a relationship with a man she hopes
will do the work is on a fool’s errand. She would do far better to find a man
who has already done the work or is at least on the path. Asking a man what if
any emotional work he has done is a good first question. A negative response
should be enough for a woman to keep looking. Men who have done the emotional
work are out there, but not in big enough numbers yet which might explain why
for the first time in American history more women are choosing to remain single
than marry. It would seem that there many women who have decided to pass on the
futile experience that is getting men to evolve.