Ah! The mysteries of male psychology…
For centuries, the ink has flowed over the complexity of female mysteries very quickly forgetting the sinuosities of their companions.
How many times have their behaviors left us perplexed? How many tears have we sacrificed on the altar of their contradictions?
Never mind! Learn to understand men, it’s here.
Enjoy
Men, Martians?
Some of you will have underlined the “subtle” reference to John Gray, the author of “Men come from Mars. Women come from Venus ”.
I quote the summary present on psychologie.com: “ A man and a woman have neither the same conception of love nor the same behavioral or linguistic code to express it. “
For this one, we are deeply dissimilar.
- The males are warriors (bah yes, Mars), wild, primitive, promoting action, power, and skill.
- And the females would be sensitive, in love in essence (yes, Venus) promoting empathy, communication ( more exactly “the harmony of exchanges” and not “the efficiency of exchanges” ), and creativity.
However…
- On Mars, there are artists, painters, psychologists, educators, nurses … In short, empathetic and creative men.
( I would not return to this notion of “harmony of exchanges”, the author has never seen an angry woman. Great good for her. )
- On Venus, there are business leaders, soldiers (if-if), police, high-level sportsmen, politicians… In short, women of action, of power.
( I will not go back to the search for so-called male competence. Anyone who does work with a little professionalism is looking for this competence .)
Note: indeed, the jobs cited for women seem for the moment to be mainly the preserve of men. Can we really blame it on “femininity” and its intrinsic sweetness? Or should we perhaps question the access to these positions for women?
But, Anash–, say the detractors, we cannot deny our biological differences!
Our biological differences in question
There are far fewer differences between two individuals in general (all genders combined) than between the group of women and men. The biological differences that nature has provided us with ( and that spoil our lives once a month ) do not affect personality.
I’m not the one saying it, it’s a wiki . ( Another link, as a bonus)
If the idea makes the general public jump ( What !? We would be similar ?! Not possible! ), It has been accepted for some time in the cognitive, anthropological, biological, sociological, ethological sciences …
The guys and “that” guy
The biggest mistake of: “Men come from Mars. Women come from Venus ”is to reduce the other, their history, their subjectivity, their relationship to the world to… their gender.
The other becomes only a representative of the category to which he belongs. And it will be easy to attribute the qualities of one (protective, conciliatory, etc.) to the other. Similarly, if Love has played tricks on us, it will be easy to imagine that the faults of one (unfaithful, liar, manipulator …) will be present in the other.
And, generalizing, we will tax all men in the same sign: “c * nnard”. We will draw, over the course of the experiments, a robot portrait of what “Man” is, amputating him with all his individuality.
In other words, we categorize gender, as we categorized on color (or origin) for a long time. It’s called misandry. (And it is the BEST way to miss this boy there, opposite, which we like.)
How to understand men?
Learning often starts with unlearning.
Perhaps it is time to forget what we think we know about men.
Perhaps we should put aside our magazines, our preconceptions, and even our experience. Maybe it is necessary to take an innocent look to watch THIS guy. Leaving aside what makes up our knowledge, we can be surprised by the other, its complexity, its paradoxes.
Indeed, our ignorance of the other is the first step to really meet him.
By trying to stop our projections ( on what Man is, how he normally behaves ), we can build a new image of this guy. Of course, the image will be less representative of the male group. But it will be closer to the person we are interested in.
And, with naive curiosity, we can question this man about his tastes, his aspirations, his convictions, his being-in-the-world.
In short, the “ I know that I know nothing ” is (perhaps) the best posture to adopt in a new meeting (in love or not).
The guy, my best friend!
On the practical side, to understand men, the best is to go with them.
With all the ambiguities that they sometimes involve, male-female friendships are treasures of knowledge, knowledge, and discoveries.
The more we are surrounded by men, the more we will gain in the ease with them and the less they will seem foreign to us. Men leave the “male” category to become Malek, Félicien, Marcelin, Yo, Aurélien… Each one is unique and only looking like himself.
Our male friends may be telling us their biggest secret: there is no one like it!
(And that’s good !)
Man and Love
Friends, friends, colleagues also allow us to separate “the boy” from the “boy who is an object of love”.
The man (like the woman) in relation is not exactly the same as the man in himself.
And often, if the men we love are alike, it is because WE put the same things in place with them (expectations, projects, hopes, behaviors, commitment …). At the same action, it is more or less logical that we find the same reaction.
In addition, the minimum of idealization that the loving inclination requires to offer us a blurred vision ( by our projections: Prince Charming and all in all ) of the beloved men.
These projections are generally solid constructions (since they are accepted as ” knowing ” about Love and men). They may not change greatly between Peter and Paul, suddenly making them look strangely alike.
Finally, if they love us too, something of their personalities is distorted to please us, to be loved by us. (The case of NiceGuy is a good example.)
In conclusion
Many of the male-female misunderstandings do not come from intrinsic differences, but from the complexity of the romantic relationship in itself.
The essence of Love is (also) to lend to the other, a paradoxical feeling of foreign proximity (or close strangeness ).
Love reveals, in fact, to everyone the similarities and dissimilarities that make the Other different. Understandable (and accessible) often, upsetting with mystery sometimes.
In the end, it is no longer a question of men or women … but, indeed, THE encounter with an Other who is not Self.
And you, do you think that men have characteristics which are their own? Do you think we can understand “men”? How? ‘Or’ What ?
