Why Mars and Venus Collide: Improve Your Relationships by Understanding How Men and Women Cope Differently with Stress. John Gray
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choice for all women. More often than not, a woman is expected to contribute financially to provide for a family. At the same time, the women’s movement has awakened women and inspired many to find a fulfilling career in order to develop all their talents. When a woman returns home from work feeling responsible for creating a beautiful home and nurturing her family, she has to do this around the demands of her job. This is a new stress, and it requires a new kind of support. No wonder women feel so overwhelmed as they balance the demands of work and home.
Having a job or career is often no longer a choice for most women, but a necessity.
Men need more support as well. Instead of coming home to rest and recover from a stressful day, a man faces a wife and family who need more from him. His wife expects more help from him to run the household and to participate in their children’s busy schedules. No longer enjoying the sense of accomplishment that comes from being a provider, he returns home to his next job. He attempts to provide some measure of support, but he has not had the time he needs to recover from his daily stress. Eventually he, too, becomes tired and irritable. After tending to the many duties of domestic life, there is little time or inclination for couples to concentrate on their relationship. This new male-female dilemma has created an undercurrent of stress that affects all areas of our lives.
Even when a woman chooses to stay at home, she is often too isolated to get the support she needs. More than half of all married women work, and the pool of available friends and organized activities for the nonworking woman has shrunk. In addition, work demands on a man who is the sole supporter of the family are extreme, because raising a family on a single salary has become increasingly difficult. He has neither the time nor energy for his marriage or relationship to be his top priority, to cater to the needs of a partner who seems to be demanding too much of him.
Today, at home we are dealing with the side effects of women becoming more like men in the workplace. Success in the work-place often requires an enormous sacrifice for most women. Without enough time during the day to nurture their feminine side, women commonly become tired, drained, and resentful. At home, natural feelings of comfort, ease, appreciation, and grace are often overshadowed by anxiety, urgency, and exhaustion.
Without new skills for coping with this stress and nurturing their emotional needs, women inevitably expect too much from their male counterparts. This puts an even greater stress on their personal relationships. Habitually and instinctively acting out outdated roles that were created in a far distant past for a different world, both men and women today relate in ways that increase stress rather than lessen it.
Women Want Men to Become Like Women
What we have learned from the workplace is that women can do any job that a man can do. Just because a woman is different and may resolve problems in a unique manner, that does not mean she cannot be just as competent as a man. There is no need for a woman to change who she is to get respect in the workplace or at home.
Being equals does not mean that we have to be the same. To give equal respect, we must recognize that we are different and support those differences. Respect is honoring who a person is and being open to appreciate what he or she has to offer.
Being equals does not mean men and women are the same or should be the same.
Just as women should not have to change themselves to be respected and appreciated in the workplace, men should not have to change who they are at home. Given their hours working outside the home or the increased demand on them as mothers and homemakers, women undeniably need more help at home, but that need should not require men to change their nature.
In our collective fantasy of an ideal relationship, men still want to return home to a happy partner, who has prepared dinner in their magazine-perfect home and who is responsive to his every sexual desire. Though most women today lack the time, energy, and inclination to live this fantasy, they have their own unrealistic expectations. When women today return home from work, they often wish a loving and supportive wife was there waiting for them.
Women today are so tired and stressed, they too want a happy wife to greet them at home.
This trend in relationships is creating a new area of conflict. In various ways and to different degrees, women want men to become like women. They want men to share equal responsibility at home and in the relationship. It is no longer enough for a man to be a good provider. If she works outside the home, then to be fair, he should contribute to work inside the home and be more supportive in the relationship. If she is doing traditional “men’s work,” then he should do traditional “women’s work.”
This sounds good, but there is another point of view. Just as women want men to change, men want women not to change. Most men, to some degree, want their partners to be the domestic divas their mothers were. A man wants to come home and be supported by his loving wife. Since he is doing what his father did, his wife should do what his mother did. Oblivious to how much it takes to organize a smooth-running household, he expects the impossible from her.
Unrealistic expectations make changing gender roles nearly impossible.
As men cling to old expectations, women are creating new expectations that are equally unrealistic. To various degrees, women want a sympathetic partner, eager to talk about the stresses of the day, who will share all the domestic responsibilities and duties. She also wants her partner to be attentive and romantic, planning dates for her pleasure after solving the many unscheduled problems and emergencies that inevitably arise in family life. In short, she wants a wife to share with her all the domestic routines, and then she wants a husband who has the energy and motivation to romance her after doing all the things men usually do, like fixing things and handling emergencies. As men cling to old expectations, women are creating new expectations. These expectations are understandable but unrealistic.
As men cling to old expectations, women are creating new expectations that are equally unrealistic.
Just as women can’t do it all, men can’t either. Women today carry a burden twice that of their mothers. They not only feel the new economic and social pressure to work outside the home, but they also experience an ancient genetic pressure to nest. A woman’s nurturing instincts and nesting urges produce needs and standards developed by a long lineage of women.
Returning home after work causes most women’s stress levels to increase.
Most men appreciate a beautiful and orderly home, yet they can easily return to an untended house and simply relax while watching TV. In his world, relaxing comes before tending to the home. After a long day at work, a man takes a deep breath and begins to relax at just the thought of going home. When a woman returns home, her stress levels go up. Every cell in her body says, “This house must be cleaned up before we can relax.”
Even if she wanted to rest, she couldn’t. Her mind is too busy with standards that she must uphold. This is also true of women who do not work outside the home. In a woman’s mind, there is a long to-do list. Until it is finished, it is very hard for her to rest, relax, or do something simply because she enjoys it.
Women are the CEOs of their homes, organizing the household and determining what has to be accomplished. A woman has to notice what needs to be done and then enlist her partner’s help. Most husbands will happily do what they are asked to do eventually, but it is rare on Mars to notice that something needs to be done. Sometimes it takes so much nagging to get something accomplished, and when it is done, the task has been performed so halfheartedly that she begins to feel it’s easier to do it all herself. Women do not understand why their partners don’t feel the same motivation to share the responsibilities of the home, and they resent it.
Under stress, women feel the pressure of a never-ending to-do list.
Women are the custodians of love, family, and relationship. When women stop being women and are too stressed to carry out these functions, we are all lost. Women remind men of what is important in life. Women hold the wisdom of the heart and inspire men to act from their hearts. Men can have great vision, but women provide the meaningful foundation. When women are not happy, no one is happy.
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