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It’s Your Turn To Talk, Men. Your Partners Are Listening
You’ve waited long enough to share your emotions. Spill it.
Too many times, you’ve condemned yourself to stay quiet, to sit and listen to your partner all while boiling inside with the urge to spew your thoughts. The message to be strong and silent is probably one you’ve received since you were a young adult, maybe even a child. Effortlessly, it’s become intermingled with stereotypical reinforcements to suck it up, to be a man, to not show any emotions, and certainly never to cry. Men, you are not the only ones suffering the cliché, your SOs are at the mercy of such stilted compartmentalizing, too. A lot of us have become unnaturally conditioned to expect you to deliver the appropriate gesture or non-gesture.
Let’s break those early and archaic rules. It’s your turn, fellas. Let your partner know what’s on your mind. Your feelings, intuitions, and needs are important. Your input is vital. You’ve waited long enough. No matter if you’re sexual orientation, when you’re in a relationship, you have committed to living out the particular role to which you most readily identify.
In traditional couplings, women can be the transmitter of these clichés and often we do it without even knowing what we’re propagating because we have also attached to a role, a place where we feel the most secure. Then we become destined to emulate it. For some women, this might mean working outside the home while making sure every detail inside is attended to; for others, it might be pitching in to help with mowing the lawn while our guy prepares the meal. We fall into reassuring roles best suited to our strengths and silently we carry out our responsibilities, usually without even thinking about it. This theory applies to our mental classifications as well, and it spills over into our communication styles.
Assigning this kind of identity can take place silently, yet we also bring it into our discussions, where we continue to foster what we think we should be saying and doing. Is there an instigator in the relationship who wants to resolve issues as soon as they start? Is there a responder who experiences anxiety or fear once fresh concerns crop up, who is compelled to iron the surface until it…
