Why you Should be Sensitive to Your Partners Needs:For Men

                  

If you ask me, it seems that not enough men pay attention to the emotional wellbeing of the women in their lives.  For some, it might be plain ignorance. For others, it’s just plain insensitivity. While this uncaring tendency may seem intentional, a lot of the time it isn’t.

You see genetically, men are wired in a way that allows them to be providers and protectors. To function in this capacity, they have to process information in real time and logically come to conclusions based on the information their senses give them. Conversely, women are wired to be caregivers and are wired to function in that capacity as well. They are attuned to the emotional signals that people around them may give out. They are also much more intuitive feelers than men are. However, this is not to imply that women are incapable of logic. In fact, some of the most intelligent and productive women I know are women. In fact, I know some very brave women who work to their bones to put food in the stomachs of their children and give them an education. Talk about provision! The fact that a woman is a weaker vessel by no means makes her incapable in any way.

Let me share this story that proves my point. A woman worked with a colleague she didn’t trust. And being a truthful, albeit forceful person, she persistently voiced her suspicions about this colleague, insisting that he was a shady person (in her own words). But this colleague was quite the jovial one and was loved by the majority, so it seemed rather odd that she would antagonize him like so. But he was later caught (red-handed) in some shady business. It was shall we say a  moment of vindication?

This straightforward compartmentalized logical (sometimes cold) wiring of the minds of men, allows them to be efficient and effective albeit insensitive. You don’t empathize with dinner, you simply kill and eat. (no offense to vegetarians). I mean you don’t empathize with threats, you simply exterminate them.

Society plays a part in this development of cold steel hearted men. From when a boy begins to develop his concept of who a man  is, he is told by parents, friends, and teachers to be a man. “Be a man!” they tell him “Don’t be a pussy”. They tell him to repress his emotions and not to express it as he should. They tell him that when he’s in pain he should suck it in, and not express it. Be a man they tell him. But then he becomes a man and then they wonder why he’s so distant and so cold. So unfeeling.

Men have emotions too just like other people but are terrible at expressing them. For example, it might be easy for me to type I love you to someone, but bring me face to face with the person, and I am invariably tongue-tied ( I speak for myself).

Also, male guardians and wards aren’t any better. They rarely lead by example. They themselves don’t know what it is to be expressive of what they feel. Display of affection is forced. A friend told me of a time when his parents heard a sermon in church about displaying affection, and his father made an attempt to practice what he heard, and put his arms around his mother and kissed her. He described the awkwardness of the scenario to me and I burst into laughter because if my parents tried such a thing, I would give them a wide berth! It would be too awkward to bear.

And these are the very things a woman needs to feel secure and assured. It’s a shame really that more men are not aware of the needs of the women in their lives.

A way out would be to educate the men about the importance of showing affection to their partners. Some men are by virtue of their natures more cold and unfeeling compared to other men. Of course, it would be unnecessary, indeed unwanted, for men to express themselves to the same extent that women do. They need a shoulder to cry on after all, and shoulders should be strong, not soft Men should be educated about how their display of affection or a lack thereof affects their spouses.

Men themselves should also begin to be conscious that it would take some effort (on their part) to ensure that their partners are fulfilled in their relationships as well. They should also learn what it means to be sensitive.  Sensitivity, empathy, and compassion aren’t weaknesses. They are even signs of a developed EQ.

Daniel Goleman’s thoughts on empathy:

In keeping with findings about other elements of emotional intelligence, there was only an incidental relationship between scores on this measure of empathic acuity and SAT or IQ scores or school achievement tests. Empathy's independence from academic intelligence has been found too in testing with a version of the PONS designed for children. In tests with 1,011 children, those who showed an aptitude for reading feelings nonverbally were among the most popular in their schools, the most emotionally stable.³ They also did better in school, even though, on average, their IQs were not higher than those of children who were less skilled at reading nonverbal message suggest  that mastering this empathic ability smooths the way for classroom effectiveness (or simply makes teachers like them more).”

As this excerpt from the book ‘Emotional intelligence’ points out. Empathy is not a weakness. It is rather  a strength.

Men this is a call to arms.