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Mechanics of Marriage article

Interesting article in The Dallas Morning News about how marriage works.

Quote:

Excerpt:
The keynote address

John Gray, one of the most famous relationship authors, is at the podium, digging through a woman's purse. He's known for his work describing the differences between men and women: particularly his book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (Harper Collins, 1992). The purse is helping illustrate his point.

Earlier, he pulled out his wallet. He has two credit cards, a driver's license and some cash.

Women, he says, carry around much more. To demonstrate, he pulls out of the huge purse a cellphone, a planner, a makeup bag and a smaller pocketbook. The audience bursts into laughter.

It's an effective metaphor. The different ways men and women respond to situations can cause relationships and marriages to unravel.

Instead, Dr. Gray thinks they should be reasons for relationships to succeed. But first, we must understand them. For example, take stress.

When men have a stressful day at work, they want to go home and retreat "to their cave."

Maybe the cave is sitting in front of the television. Maybe it's behind the newspaper. The thing is: They don't want to talk. They want to forget.

Women, on the other hand, come home from a stressful day and want their husbands to notice. They want to talk. They want a hug.

And what do men do?

"I'm going to be a really loving husband," Dr. Gray says. "I'm going to ignore her."

There was laughter again. The audience gets it. That's what the man wants. Not what his wife needs.

What do you married, or formerly married, people think of this?

100% bang-on accurate.

I can't tell you how many times I've done for lurkette exactly what I'd like to have done for me when it was 180-degrees the opposite of what she wanted.

I'm learning, though. I'm learning. ;)

Yep, every girl I've ever been with, I tell them that when I'm pissed off... just leave me alone. They never listen... stupid of them.

Of course my first couple of relationships when they tell me to leave them alone I listened... stupid of me.

i don't argue that this article isn't a somewhat accurate portrayal of men and women and how they typically behave, and the advice that what you would want is not always what your partner would want is valuable (and also applicable to christmas gifts!). however, my main problem with Gray and his ilk is that they tend to stereotype based on gender, what's *most* women or men want means nothing unless your partner fits the norm. one should always ask their partner what they need, not assume that the're just like all other women/men.

I suspect these are good places to start from, Brianna. It's also true that this is a short article summarizing a week's worth of seminars. Don't think that anything other than the stuff that's easily summarized is in there.

Are all these experts telling us our nature or are we just responding to their nurture?

I dunno. My ex husband would come home, bitch about his job, boss, whateverthefuck pissed him off, and then he'd go 'work' on his car/blazer/monster/whateverthefuck project he was currently beginning (somehow the bastard was never able to finish anything.... ahem.. yes.... I meant exactly what I said), and then be bitchy to me the rest of the night. When I had a bad day, at first I'd want a hug, or to talk about it, and he'd just ignore me or tell me to stop bitching. So I learned to keep my mouth shut.... and stay busy with other things... I miss my doggies....