Marriage"My work is so stressful. When I get home I just want to push it out of my mind and forget about it. I’m looking for an escape. To talk about it is only going to make me feel worse.”
This statement, or one similar, is surprisingly common in a relationship. It is an unfortunate position for a man to take for it actually increases his internal stress and has a harmful impact on his marriage. Since women are much more relationship-oriented, it is very rare for a woman not to want to talk about her work, thus the focus of this article is on men. This is an important issue in any relationship, married or otherwise.
Let’s start with the fallacy that not talking about something is stress-reducing. Men do seem to have an exceptional capacity for compartmentalizing, i.e., separating out a piece of their life and pushing it out of their awareness. But that is conscious awareness. It does not mean that the issue and its associated feelings and concerns are not actively festering inside. The parallel is the all-to-common scenario of men who have physical symptoms that could suggest a health problem yet ignore them. But the clogged arteries are only getting more clogged or the malignant tumor is still growing.
Similarly, whatever is bothering the husband about his work doesn’t go away by not talking about it. The underlying tension shows in many ways including an edge in his voice, being overly critical of family members, a quick temper, sleeping or digestive problems, or withdrawal.
Since the reasoning here is fallacious, what is really going on? Sometimes it is the sense that the wife will judge him as weak or ineffective because he can’t handle the pressure or solve the problem. Men still grow up in a society where asking for help or not being able to solve problems on their own is a sign of weakness. It is played out over and over in sports, which is so ingrained into American culture. Playing hurt, coming through in the clutch, never admitting the need to be taken out of a game – all those macho images, which are so strongly reinforced by the nightly sports highlights of individual achievements as opposed to examples of how good teamwork helped win the game.
This fear of being seen as weak is often intensified for so many men whose apparent confidence as achievers masks a sense of being an impostor. It is amazing how many men view their success, once you are able to peel away the surface presentation, as luck or deception. There is often a lack of a true, internalized confidence about being skilled and having earned their success. With such an inner confidence, one is not only more comfortable about sharing mistakes or uncertainties, but there is also an important confidence that even if this job doesn’t work out, there will be other ways to be successful.
A rarely acknowledged contribution to this sense of being an imposter, and one that may be increasing, is that a significant portion of men have one or more moments of achievement that were accomplished by cheating or deception. In school, there will often be an example of an important exam or project that was given an “A” but the boy had a crib sheet or downloaded someone else’s work (this is where the cheating is becoming much more commonplace, by males and females, especially at the high school and college levels). Because we tend to remember negatives disproportionately, any false victory often becomes viewed as reflective of the man’s true worth rather than as an occasional bad decision.
Boys are still primarily valued for their achievements. Unfortunately, many men grow up with a sense that they were never good enough to get the approval they sought from a distant, critical father (or mother, in some cases). For these men, nothing is ever good enough and they are often driven towards unachievable perfection in the belief that that is the way to obtain love. This becomes a major roadblock in marriage because it contributes to the work-obsessed husband who cannot talk about his work nor feel secure in his career or relationship. It reaches a notable extreme when a man loses (or is about to lose) his job and hides that reality from his wife by acting as if he is still going to work everyday. I’ve never heard of a woman doing this.
One other practical barrier to talking about work is that occasionally a man does want to discuss something but because he hasn’t been talking about his job, his wife knows very little about the people involved. The husband feels it will take too long to explain who the players are and what the background is to the current problem, so he doesn’t bother. One of the advantages of regularly sharing information is that it is so much easier for the wife to be in tune with what is going on. Sometimes even sharing good news is left unstated because the wife lacks the background information to really appreciate it.
Of course, this process of sharing work issues doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Some women bring their own anxieties to the table and overreact to hearing about problems at work. Images of job loss and financial problems begin to dance in their heads and are quickly evident to their husbands. Naturally this discourages the husband from letting his wife know about any problems at work, even those not directly involving him. Also, where many women are accomplished in their own careers (even if currently taking time off to care for the children) they often make the error men are so commonly accused of, i.e., offering advice when it hasn’t been asked for. First rule is to just be an empathetic, validating listener. Advice should be offered only when requested.
So how does this unhealthy pattern get changed? Often I begin with some facts that catch the husband’s attention. Single men don’t live as long as married men. Married men in good marriages live longer than men in bad marriages. Increased communication improves marriages. Talking reduces chronic stress; chronic stress breaks down our immune systems and results in more medical problems and, again, shortened lives. So I simply ask the man if he’s interested in living longer! At the very least, it usually piques interest in re-examining the myth that silence is golden.
It helps if the husband can look at some of the unstated reasons for not talking about work that are mentioned above. A husband who can recognize that there’s more to avoiding the subject than the excuse that it will only be more distressing is on the road to sharing. Even when that doesn’t happen, just the willingness to give it a try, either to help the marriage and or to see if it reduces stress, will often result in a commitment to begin talking more about work. This is best done at times when the wife can be fully attentive. Sometimes that requires scheduling “talk time” which may include agreeing to turn off TV’s, computers, cell phones, and ignoring phone calls.
Recently a husband who had taken this negative position regarding talking about work agreed to try. The transformation was striking. He quickly realized the benefits of getting the daily stress off his chest. He actually began looking forward to getting home and sharing office stories with his wife, not all of which were negative. He sensed his wife’s genuine interest and support – at times, just explaining something to her gave him new insights – sometimes she was able to give him useful feedback. All of this served to bring the couple closer, which proved to have many benefits for both. So guys, how about it? Talking about work really matters.
Back to Marriage | Back to ParenTalk
Top | Home | My
Practice | Parenting & Marriage Advice | Resources
| Contact
