Patriarchy is a social system (one that is not only about a historic power differential between men and women) and there is no doubt that it exists and exerts widespread influence in our culture. It’s a dominance hierarchy, which is why we are so acculturated to always compare ourselves to everyone around us. It’s why we can’t make much headway on racism, sexual harassment, homophobia and bullying — because our entire social system is build around a pyramid of power and ranking within that pyramid. That’s what patriarchy truly means.
Pretending that isn’t so won’t make it go away. Even though 29% of women out-earn their husbands, they still overwhelmingly are expected to do the bulk of the housework and childcare. In fact, the more financially dependent a man is on his wife, the less housework he tends to do. It’s a not so subtle way to assert “but I’m still the man.” That’s patriarchy in action.
Statistically, 70% of divorces are initiated by women and they cite as the reasons the same things that the therapist I quoted from said.
I get how that’s perhaps not the way to tackle an individual couple’s session, but pretending that it’s not a factor in our culture is just intentional blindness. We can’t solve problems that we can’t see and acknowledge the existence of. You were the one who said that the OP was trying to hold men to a standard that they did not understand. How else are they going to understand if no-one is allowed to speak about it? The culture they were raised in says that it’s only right for the man to be the leader of the family (52% of Americans still think that overtly) and that a woman and children are to follow him (as part of the dominance hierarchy of the family).
Things have changed in the world in important ways in the past 50 years, but ideas about relationships have not caught up. The way your parents lived and the kind of marriage they had won’t necessarily work anymore. But how are we going to make that clear, other than by talking about it? Non-marital relationships break up closer to 50/50 but marriages break up overwhelmingly because women are fed up with the way they are treated — not because men are inherently bad human beings, but because they’ve been taught things that don’t work anymore.
I have no idea what the training of that therapist is, but I see nothing wrong with challenging outdated relationship ideas and making it clear that it’s not enough to be a good provider and a nice guy — that you have to really engage with your wife and not act like you own her (because not so long ago you didn’t have to do those things). Marital rape wasn’t outlawed in all 50 states until 1993. If you find that offensive, it says an awful lot about you, I think.
Of course women contribute to relationship problems too, but they have been overwhelmingly socialized to be “human givers.” They have been taught and even demanded to put themselves last, to not honor their own needs, to silently support those around them at their own expense. If you’re not taking that into account when you exhort women to ask for what they want, then you are missing a huge piece of the puzzle. Gender socialization begins on the day that babies are born. The science around that is overwhelming. That doesn’t need to be the focus of your work with couples, but pretending it’s not in play seems pretty counter-productive when it’s the ocean we all swim in.
I appreciate getting to have this conversation but I don’t see us coming to any further agreement so I’m going to bow out.
