Vive La Difference And Listen Up
We were at dinner, my sister’s boyfriend and I, on a night when she was working late. As we studied our menus, a smile spilled slowly across his face. For once, he said, he could eat what he wanted without my sister nagging him about his blood pressure. My almost-brother-in-law gazed longingly upon the menu, all but drooling over the sinful promises of steaks and cakes. Then the waitress came.
And he ordered a salad.
He muttered something about being in the mood to munch some greenery, but I wasn’t fooled. They haven’t even told it to the preacher yet, but the guy has already mastered the first rule of married life: The Woman Is Always Right.
Rule No. 2, in case you’re interested, reads as follows: If The Woman Is Ever Wrong, See Rule No. 1. And no, I didn’t make that up. That’s from an actual list given to me by an actual woman.
All of which should help you understand why I don’t go reeling in surprise at a psychologist’s recent announcement that the secret to a good marriage is for the husband to do as the wife says. In fact, I can sum up my response in two words: Well, duh.
Call it another case of science going all-out to prove the obvious.
John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of Washington, was part of a team that studied 130 newlywed couples for six years. Their findings upended years of psychobabble wisdom. Remember all that stuff about “active listening” where, in the heat of argument, you’re supposed to paraphrase what you understand your partner to be saying? Remember how they said it was important to “validate” your spouse’s concerns?
Well, forget it. Just do as you’re told, men. Give in more often. Give weight to her views.
Yes, researchers do advise women to govern wisely, to use a soft approach in getting their way. Yet in the end, it still comes down to this: wives manage husbands.
Gottman’s team, which reported its findings in an article in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, took pains to convey how “shocked and surprised” they were by this finding. Which tells me that not only do none of these folks have a long-term marriage, but they’ve never even seen one.
Me, I’m only shocked and surprised that these findings raised no wail of protest from representatives of the women’s or men’s rights movements. I choose to take this as a tacit recognition of the fact that impolitic truth is, nevertheless, truth.
Hooray for truth.
For years, we’ve been sold a politically correct untruth under which we were to regard women and men as not only equal but the same. In other words, having not just identical worth but also identical makeup. As if hormones and sex organs were just incidentals beneath which we were indistinguishable.
But science keeps telling us otherwise. From author John Gray of “Venus and Mars” fame and now to Gottman, we see an affirmation of the apparent: that women and men see, approach and do things differently and that those differences are powerful.
I’ve known women who would rather sit through an NBA triple-header snacking on pork rinds than acknowledge this truth. The reason for the resistance is simple enough. As anyone who’s ever been on the receiving end of sexism, or any other “ism,” can tell you, “different” is too often just a patronizingly polite euphemism for “inferior.”
Perhaps, however, we’ve finally grown up enough to understand our differences for what they are: a source of strength. I find it telling that as we stand in the shadow of the millennium, a psychologist is reaffirming an ancient marital dynamic that emphasizes the fact that we are not the same. And that no one outside his team of researchers seems threatened or even much surprised.
My sister’s boyfriend sure wouldn’t be. He has no apologies for following orders, even in her absence. Sure, he said, he’ll take some grief from the fellas for it, but he considers the alternative - a single life - a whole lot worse.
I tend to agree. Women are wonderful, and marriage the very best thing that can ever happen to a guy.
Of course, my wife told me to say that.
xxxx