Grouchy Guy: Anxiety in Married Men
Grouchy Guy: Anxiety in Married Men
BLOGGER: LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PHD
There is one source of resentment that married men often suffer that isn’t a wife’s “fault” but for which women often get unfairly blamed anyhow. Men strongly feel that how successful they are is a measure of their masculinity. Especially, when men marry and have children they feel a responsibility to be a good provider and the better they are at that job the better they feel about themselves. If men aren’t as successful as they feel they should be, they begin to feel like a “loser” and get depressed. Men may defend against their underlying depression and shameful feelings of inferiority by getting angry, especially at their romantic partners.
Why do men get angry at their partners when they don’t feel as successful at their jobs or in their careers as they feel they should be, after all it’s not the woman’s fault?
Yet in a man’s unconscious mind it is the woman’s fault. He feels that she expects a certain level of success from him, that providing at a certain level is his responsibility and his duty. In his mind, if it weren’t for her implicit expectations, he wouldn’t have to enter the rat race and get beat up in the effort to make a living. One reason many men avoid marriage and family is that they don’t want to be tied down with responsibilities they worry they might be unable to fulfill. Or men wait until they are as advanced and as secure in their careers as they can possibly be before settling down with marriage and children even if it means waiting until they are forty or even fifty to get close to the top of their income earning potential.
Women sometimes have a hard time understanding how men feel about this issue. Women may feel that as long as you have got your family and enough money to get by, they don’t understand what the big deal is. But for men it’s as much about their manly pride as about the practicality of getting by. For most women, the family is their central source of meaning and of self-esteem and if the family is OK then all is well in the world. For most men, that isn’t enough. Their manly pride requires a certain level of prestige, social status, and success, mostly reflected in how much money they make. This is not to say that some women aren’t as status oriented as men and that some women do make their men feel like “losers” if they don’t make enough money. But I have noticed over the years, that this issue often isn’t as big a deal for most women as it is for most men. As a consequence, many women don’t really get or understand the way men feel about this issue and that lack of understanding just makes men all the more resentful.
Women can give men all the reassurance in the world that in their eyes their men are a great success, that they are happy with their level of affluence, and that they don’t mind that much having to work to help support the family, but deep down men don’t really believe it. Men worry that it’s all a bunch of false reassurances that in fact makes them all the more resentful. It’s almost like men are a bit paranoid on this issue. It’s like men secretly suspect that all women are “gold diggers” who only want men for their money and secretly have contempt for a man who can’t bring home the bacon to support them and their children in a grand way. And in men’s minds there is always a constant and ongoing social comparison with other men and how well other men are doing which they assume women are making as well even if they don’t say so openly.
So what is a woman to do to deal with this sort of male paranoia if everyday reassurance feels patronizing and condescending to your typical male with an ego bruised by the fact that he hasn’t lived up to his own high ambitions for himself. Once again, humor might be the only real antidote. But how do you kid around about such a touchy issue, that your boyfriend or husband feels like an unlovable loser no matter how much you reassure him. Well, first of all when ever he acts like a grouchy guy and snaps at you for some trivial or stupid little thing, you could just snap right back: “Don’t take your frustrations out on me, don’t be a sore loser just because things aren’t going so well at work. Suck it up, take it like a man.” Or “We all have to eat to shit at work sometimes so stop complaining. Look at all of your shit I have to put up with. Why do you think you should be able to go through life and never have to eat shit just to bring home a paycheck for your family? And I do appreciate all the shit you have had to eat over the years to support our family and some of it may have even been my own cooking.”
Though women tend to be skeptical, men are more likely to respond positively to this sort of blunt and crude language than more sensitive and lovingly reassuring language which is felt as infantilizing. In men’s mind, if you have to comfort them the way you would comfort a baby, you definitely must think they are the biggest loser in the whole world. You are emasculating them by treating them like a hurt little boy rather than respecting their masculinity by encouraging them to face a harsh reality like a man and stop whining about it. They need to be encouraged not to take themselves so seriously and to lighten up.
If you stubbornly insist on treating your man in a lovingly reassuring way you will probably just antagonize him and he will probably push you away for making him feel like a big baby. Then you will be feeling hurt that your love and sympathy has been rejected and you will probably get into a big fight about it. I appreciate that it might not feel natural to talk to your man in the way I am suggesting and you might resent a suggestion that requires you to do something that at least initially feels uncomfortable, but try a little experiment and if it works what have you got to lose.
To find out more about Dr. Josephs, click on his photo.
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Tags: anxiety, grouchy, grouchy guy, guy, husband, imagineage, married, men, men's issues, psychology, relationship, wife, women's issues
