Blame the Men Trend
I come home from work, walk into the bathroom, and see what no one wants to see. Exactly what you think, sitting in the toilet unflushed. With a roll of my eyes, I do the simple task of pushing the handle, which took exactly two seconds, and everyone’s worst nightmare ensued…fast forward to me cursing under my breathe as I clean up the bathroom floor because someone couldn’t just flush a toilet.
“Why can’t guys just do simple things?”
“Why if I want something done, do I have to do it myself?”
A large majority of experts claim that relationships come down to one thing. The man.
How hard does your man try? How special does your man make you feel? Is your relationship doomed, it’s okay, it’s the man’s fault?
There are countless people who are far smarter than I am doing endless studies on relationships. All I have, and all any of us have, are people around us dealing with the same problem - trying to make their relationship work.
As women, we like to obsess. Having five of your closest friends proofread a text before it’s sent, yes! Getting together for a girl’s night where you dish about all the things your man does wrong, okay! Watching sappy movies wondering why your guy doesn’t do that, sign me up! We whine, we complain, and yet we very rarely remember that we are 50 percent of our relationship. This means we are 50 percent of the problem.
Insert me angrily texting my boyfriend wondering if he doesn’t have the time to flush a toilet, how has he gotten this far in life. Long story short, turns out the toilet was very broken, sparing you the gory details, it wasn’t his lack of flushing, but moreover the lack of correct plumbing which caused my late-night cursing session.
While cleaning up an overflowed toilet doesn’t exactly sound like a moment for a life changing epiphany, it made me realize, why do we automatically blame men for everything? Why, when something goes wrong, is it their fault? Why, when we are unhappy, is it because of something they did?
After researching, and googling and interviewing, I came to the realization that this “blame the men trend” is everywhere. Basically, all men are stupid and it’s always their fault.
Here is a novel idea, how about no?
After stepping back, I couldn’t help but see a pattern start to appear. We have a tendency to self-sabotage our own relationships because we do not view them as equal. How could we ever expect to have a Prince Charming if we don’t act like Cinderella? If we want the world from our men, why wouldn’t we want to give it right back to them?
Over the course of the past month, I opened up a platform for men to answer one very simple question.
“What are (3) things you want/or would like to hear (or hear more often) from the woman you love?”
In no way, shape or form could I have been prepared for the answers and reactions I received.
Who would have thought that this singular question would ultimately create tensions in relationships, change the way people talk to each other, make people feel very uncomfortable, and begin to blow open the myth that “guys are stupid.”
Guess what…guys aren’t stupid, we just make them feel that way.
It very quickly became clear that a question aimed solely toward the man, about the man, for the man was not as easy as it seemed, but that became the point. The question I was asking wasn’t simple at all. It turned the tables on traditional roles of “happy wife, happy life” and made it about the guy.
Perhaps, the most important part became something I never foresaw: how a simply difficult question immediately impacted all of our relationships.
Tune in next month for PART 2 of “Blame the Men Trend” and see how a simple question paved the way for changing how we look at those we love.
