Men need to treat learning relational skills as important as working out
“Modern marriages ... require the diplomatic skills of a UN Ambassador.”
I surprised myself yesterday. I actually wanted to address a conflict head on. Part of me was even looking forward to it. Instead of hiding and avoiding—which is my norm—I stepped toward it.
And guess what? It went great! The conflict is squashed. I don’t feel tense about it anymore. I even feel closer to the person now that we’ve hashed it out.
What caused the conflict happened a few days ago, when my friend and I were drinking beers around a fire in my backyard. My friend cracked an insensitive joke to my neighbor, who was out walking her dogs.
From my perspective, he was trying to connect through humor. But my neighbor didn’t take it that way. She immediately called him out. He apologized but then also called her out for calling him out. It got awkward (they hadn’t interacted before that moment).
My neighbor went inside, and my friend felt bad about it. We talked it through. Even though his joke was a little offensive, I felt bad because he hadn’t meant any harm. I also worried about what my neighbor thought of me. She’d recently moved into the house next to mine, and I barely knew her yet.
But yesterday I sought her out. I sat on the back porch in the evening when she’d be walking her dog. When she came out, I apologized for what happened. She apologized for how she responded to my friend. We laughed about how intense it had gotten. She told me about stressful things going on in her life, which had made her more sensitive and reactive in that moment. The tension lifted. We were neighbors chatting on a sunny spring evening.
I’m surprised because normally I would’ve hoped the conflict would blow over.
I’d feel awkward leaving my back door for days or weeks, hoping not to run into her. But something inside me wanted to move towards the discomfort. The situation seemed less like something to avoid and more like an opportunity for connection. And that’s what it turned out to be.
I’ve heard that “repair”—a word therapists use for addressing conflict—is the most important skill for relationships. I’ve done it with my partner many times. But I’m still surprised when I want to step toward conflict rather than avoid it like I’ve done since I can remember.
My hunch is something shifted when I joined a therapy group nearly four years ago. Every week, I meet with five other people and a therapist to practice relational skills. That’s all we do. We hang out for a little over an hour and see what happens.
Inevitably, some sort of conflict comes up between two or more of us. Sometimes it’s a difference of opinion, like about religion or politics. Sometimes there’s anger, fear, or crying. It can take a while, but we nearly always come back and repair what happened. It can get awkward. It can get tense. But getting through it brings us closer together. That’s the point. We’re learning how to get close with other people. Really close. The amount of closeness everyone deep down inside craves.
I appreciate the experience of being in this group so much, because it’s especially hard for men to connect in this way.
Everyone struggles with conflict. It’s scary. No one teaches us how to do it. But men are particularly held back because of incorrect and misleading ideas about “traditional masculinity.”
We get the message as boys that it’s “weak” or “soft” or “girly” or “gay” to express vulnerable feelings. We’re told we’re “naturally” less emotional than women, and that if we show anything different then we’re less of a man. We’re shamed for apologizing or backing down in an argument.
This leaves us with two options when it comes to conflict: Either stand up for yourself, get aggressive, and be ready to fight, or be the “nice guy,” sweep your true feelings under the rug, and “go with the flow.” Our fear of being vulnerable keeps us locked inside. It tends to make our friendships superficial. We’re more comfortable talking about sports or cars or philosophical concepts than about how we feel. It also tends to make us rely on women—usually a partner, if we have one—for emotional support.
That’s a problem. Not only because more and more men these days are chronically lonely. Not only because relying on one person for anything—especially emotional support—is risky. But also because (heterosexual) relationships are getting harder than maybe ever before.
, president of American Institute for Boys and Men and writer of the newsletter , recently wrote that “modern marriages ... require the diplomatic skills of a UN Ambassador.” (I disagree with Reeves’s argument that relationships required less relational skills in the “old world.” The nuclear family is in fact a relatively recent invention, only a few hundred years old. There’s a decent chance that relationships required more relational skills back when couples had to navigate and rely on larger networks of family and community. This doesn’t mean it was harder back then. Capitalism puts so much pressure on couples to be everything. But that’s a subject for another post.)Referring to the work of Kay Hymowitz, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, Reeves writes:
“Egalitarian marriages require more relational skill. There’s more negotiation over roles and responsibilities, more of a need to be flexible about identities, and a higher expectation of emotional intimacy and support.”
I’m hesitant to agree with a conservative, but Hymowitz is correct. With more and more women entering the workforce (which is a good thing!), men are understandably confused about our role in the family and society. We were told that all we need to do is focus on work and be providers. But the share of women who earn as much as or significantly more than their husband has nearly tripled over the past 50 years—to almost half of those in heterosexual marriages. And this trend likely will continue. There are now roughly three women college students for every two men.
Learning relational skills are becoming just as important as taking care of your body.
Reeves argues that we need more “male spaces” to help boys and men develop these skills. I agree with that. Men’s groups have been crucial to my journey of healing and growing as a man. But I’ll add that I’ve mostly learned these skills from women. Most of the people in my therapy group are women (though the group therapist leading us is a man). Reading feminist books and following feminists on social media has helped me more than anything else find my own voice as a man.
The most powerful people I’ve ever been around have been women, usually women of color, often those who are queer. Powerful, as in they know who they truly are deep down inside, and they aren’t afraid to show that to other people. Powerful, as in they bring out the best in others because their hearts feel wide open.
That gets me to my last point. Men don’t need to work on our relational skills just to keep up with modern relationship requirements. We don’t need to learn how to be more emtionially expressive and how to “repair” after an argument just to appease our partner or women in general.
We need to do it for ourselves. The more relational and emotionally expressive I’ve become, the more I’ve enjoyed my relationship and friendships. The more I’ve let go of so-called “traditional masculinity,” the less alone I feel and the more it seems like I belong in this world, just as I am.
Now, a question for the comments below: How did you learn how to relate to people?
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