Marriage Enrichment Classes

I was attending a weekly men's Bible study up until my last household move. Right before I left we sat straight through some weeks of a Christian marriage enrichment class. I have been straight through a few of these in the past, sometimes alone, sometimes with my wife of 19 years, and I have noticed a common bond with all of these classes. either they are religious based or secular, they could all be subtitled, "If we want to enhance our marriage we must change male behavior." These classes have industrialized out of our secular society's larger battle against male conduct. Even the Christian society has fallen for this philosophy. It is plainly male bashing.

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These classes typically start off the same way. The moderator says, "We will begin by discussing the differences between men and women:"

Women are complex

Men are simple

Women are creative

Men are pragmatic

Women are communicators

Men are stoic

Women are compassionate

Men are insensitive

Women are in touch with their inner feelings

Men deny their feelings

Women are detailed oriented

Men are only curious in the broad points

Women nag because they love the man and want the man to improve

Men gripe because they are self-centered

Women are enlightened

Men are Neanderthals

The list always generates some giggles, and the mediator might try to use some euphemisms to soften the blow to the men, but you can see the underlying message. The women rehearse the proper proper and the men are measured against it. So the clear explication to making marriages last longer is to change the man's behavior:

The man must open up his feelings and cry like a small girl.

The man must listen quietly and not fidget while his wife tells him about her daily activities in excruciating detail. Even if it takes her 10 minutes to elucidate an event that only took 2 minutes.

The man must make more time for the woman.

The man must buy spontaneous presents for the woman.

The man must leave small love notes nearby the house for the woman and offer backrubs.

The man must interrupt his busy day at work and call her to tell her he is thinking about her.

The man must be more responsive.

Ladies, here is some advice. Save your ingrained feminine needs for your girlfriends. Your girlfriend will listen to every word you say, cry with you, and buy you spur-of-the-moment presents. If you want a sensitive man, they come in three models.

The manipulator who has an ulterior motive

The gay man

The hen-pecked, beaten down husband

You might hear the marriage moderator say that both the man and woman must tell more but everybody knows that this criticism is directed at the man. Has anybody stopped to reconsider why the man is not much of a communicator? possibly he doesn't like listening to all that nagging. Have you ever heard the marriage moderators ask the women to change their behavior? To stop nagging? To come to be more responsive in bed? To save her draining recounts of the day's activities for her girlfriends?

Society has been trying to feminize the man ever since the feminists figured out that they could not come to be equal. They asked for the vote and got it, but that did not make them equal. They asked for abortion and got it, but that didn't make them equal. They asked for favoritism in the work place and got it, but that didn't make them equal either. So they decided they had to level down male behavior in order to try to generate a fair playing field. They strike men very early on by feeding Ritalin to our schoolboys, discouraging gender oriented toys and competing activities in our grammar schools, and prohibiting scorekeeping in youth sports leagues. This collective engineering continues on into college with Title Ix restrictions and the growth of "Women Studies" programs. It is prevalent in our beloved culture with the rise of metrosexuals, the often-negative depiction of men in movies and television, and the war against marriage.

I am not a knuckle dragger and I understand that if the husband or boyfriend is a drunken, abusive, adulterer he needs to change. But most of the other behaviors that the marriage class is trying to change are not harmful and are hard-wired into most males. Yes, men and women tend to have hard-wired behaviors that are different. I know that it is politically incorrect to propose that the sexes are different but anyone with more sense than an Ivy League sociology professor knows this.

It is a mistake to try to feminize men. I believe that this trend will make the disjunction rate even higher. Thousands of years of hard-wiring have made differences in the sexes that I think should be celebrated. Don't try to change the behavior. A man and a woman are wired differently and both have their strengths and weaknesses. This is a good thing, they harmonize each other. If you try to re-wire them into something different, they come to be rivals and competitors. And no, I am not a troglodyte trying to "keep women in their place." anybody who has been married for any distance of time knows that the woman runs the household.

So what is the acknowledge to our marital woes? possibly there is no answer. possibly the entry of women into the workforce and the invention of the birth operate pill have doomed the marriage institution, as we know it. Prior to these mid 20th century changes, men and women became married and stayed married basically for two reasons. The man wanted quarterly sex and the women wanted financial security. Don't act shocked, you know it is true. The entry of women into the work place meant that she no longer needed to rely on a husband for financial security. The invention of the birth operate pill meant more pre-marital sex for the man. I am not arguing against women in the workforce or against the birth operate pill. I am just pointing out that these two factors have changed our society in unexpected ways.