Learn from Women About Relationships
There are parts of life most men don't think easily about. We are hurt into not being able to think about them. Most women can think about them more easily because they have been hurt differently than men.
Any part of life, any thinking that makes life go better, should be interesting to us. Yet there are things most men can't think about at all because of sexism and men's oppression. It is considered "unmanly" to be concerned with these areas. We also can't bear to listen to someone else's thoughts about them. An impatience comes up. They feel unimportant, and we simply want to go on.
These things we can't consider are interesting pieces of life. Acting out our impatience about them is, of course, an active part of sexism, and it messes up our relationships. It doesn't let us value what women do well.
Thinking and communicating about relationships is not something men are generally very good at. It is often reduced, in men's vocabulary, to "girl talk." Most of us are left on our own to try to figure out relationships. We don't know how to talk to someone else about them. Many women, however, have some slack for looking at and thinking about what might be possible between two people. Men's isolation makes it difficult for us to think about this, and we end up looking at relationships in odd ways. One result of our difficulties is how few relationships we tend to have versus how many relationships most women have.
We can push ourselves to listen to women's thinking about relationships, no matter how irritated and impatient we may feel, no matter what bubbles up. We need to counsel on those feelings. They arise from the hurts that have been pushed on us and have left us functioning so oddly separate. We have a lot to learn.
Tim Jackins