“Women are way too sensitive—you say one thing to them and they fall apart.”
“Everything is about feelings to women. Instead of thinking, they just react.”
“Living with a woman is one big emotional melodrama.”
This is one of the myths about women that really bugs me, because it negatively characterizes one of the most beautiful qualities women possess—the ability to feel deeply and to express those feelings—as a character flaw rather than a gift. This characterization is based on a value judgment that says to show emotions is somehow a less desirable state than to cover up emotions. Of course, this is one of the messages most men received from the time they were little boys: to hold back tears is more courageous than to cry; to be tough is more desirable than to be afraid; to be independent is stronger than to need.
In my opinion, men spend their entire lives recovering from this social conditioning that robs them of their ability to honor and show emotion. But one of the many unfortunate consequences of this kind of thinking is that men often project the standards that have been imposed upon them onto women, and according to those standards, we fail miserably. What’s the result? Men often misinterpret women’s natural sensitivity as weakness, our ability to feel deeply as dramatic indulgence, and our expression of emotion as an indication that we are a mess.
myth: Women are too emotional.
truth: Women are in touch with our feelings.
Once again, let me offer a disclaimer: There are women, just as there are men, who are emotionally unbalanced and out of control. But here we’re talking about the average woman who feels deeply and readily expresses those feelings. The mistake men make is characterizing a woman as too emotional simply because she is in touch with her emotions.
What do men mean by “too emotional”? I think they mean “too emotional” for how they think a man should be. It’s as if men have an invisible barometer that measures feelings, and the measurement has to fall below a certain point for them to feel they are normal. They can be sad, but not too sad, and crying is definitely over the top. They can be scared, but not too scared, and feeling out of control is absolutely unacceptable. Anger is okay, because it’s a more macho emotion to many men, as opposed to a “weak” emotion. Need and loneliness, on the other hand, are more vulnerable emotions, and must be kept in check. Of course, I’m generalizing, but you get the point: Men judge women’s emotionality by then-own standards regarding what is acceptable or unacceptable for a man. That’s why women appear to be too emotional.
There’s another reason men misinterpret a woman’s expression of emotion as a sign of weakness or instability—women don’t compartmentalize emotions like men do, and so it appears that we are not in control of our feelings. Remember Chapter 1, in which we talked about how women put love first, and rather than having a Love Room, the whole house of our consciousness is dedicated to love? Well, for a woman, if something is not right in one room of the house, it’s not right in the whole house. We are always a wife or girlfriend or lover first, no matter what else we are doing. Men, on the other hand, can walk out of the Love Room, where there may be a problem, flip a switch in their brain, and suddenly they are an accountant or a dentist or a computer programmer. Because men are able to compartmentalize like this, it is easier for them to block off feelings, whereas it is much more difficult for most women to shut off our emotions and go about our business as if nothing is the matter.
What Women Want Men to Know:
Just because women can’t shut off feelings as easily as men can doesn’t mean we are feeling too much.
As we discussed in previous chapters, women are highly tuned in to people and to the world around us. We are, for the most part, more sensitive than men, physically, emotionally, and psychically. But sensitivity is not the same as weakness. Indeed, it is a gift.
I believe one of the reasons the Higher Power that manifested the universe we live in chose to create two sexes with very different temperaments was because there is a lot we are supposed to teach each other. From men, women have the opportunity to learn about the power of focus, how to exist in the world from a position of strength, and so much more. And one of the most important lessons men get to learn from women is how to live more from the heart and honor their feelings.
When men believe Myth, several problems develop.
Men use this myth as an excuse to discount a woman’s emotions.
Meredith and her husband, Tom, decide to meet after work for dinner at a neighborhood restaurant. Tom has been working on a difficult project and hasn’t had much time to relax lately. After the waiter takes their order, they begin discussing how the day went for both of them.
“So what’s going on with the project?” Meredith asks.
“It’s just a mess,” Tom replies. “I don’t know if I can take this stress.”
“Tell me what the problem is, honey. Maybe I can help you think it through.”
“Oh sure,” Tom retorts sarcastically, “you’re going to fix it for me!”
“Tom, I’m just trying to help.” “No, you’re trying to interfere.”
Meredith feels her heart begin to ache, and tears fill her eyes. “Tom, you don’t need to speak to me that way. It really hurts my feelings.”
“Oh geez, you’re so damn sensitive,” Tom responds in a loud voice. “I can’t even have a simple conversation with you.”
What’s happening here? Tom, who’s usually a kind and sweet guy, is not being very polite or respectful to his wife. Yes, it’s probably because he’s so stressed out from work, but that’s no reason for him to take it out on Meredith, and he knows it. So when Tom sees Meredith start to cry, and realizes he hurt her feelings, he feels awful. But because he’s proud and doesn’t like to feel he’s done something wrong, it’s hard for him to admit to himself or to her that he’s behaving badly. What does he do instead? He turns the responsibility around and blames Meredith for being too sensitive. If she weren’t so vulnerable, he tells himself, she wouldn’t have reacted as strongly to what he said.
What Women Want Men to Know:
Men often blame women for being too sensitive or emotional in order to avoid taking responsibility for their own insensitive words or deeds.
Men use this myth as a way to cover up their feelings of powerlessness.
Linda is lying in bed with her husband, Howard, confiding her fears and worries about her mother, whom she may have to put in a nursing home. Tears pour down Linda’s cheeks as she describes her phone call with her mother earlier in the day. “She begged me not to put her in a home,” Linda cries, holding tightly to Howard. “I tried to explain that she needs full-time care, and that she can’t get it unless she’s in a supervised facility, but she just went on and on about how terrified she was. I feel so guilty.”
Howard listens to his wife pour her heart out and doesn’t know what to say. He wants to console her, but he doesn’t seem to have a solution to her problem. “Look, Linda, you just have to get a grip on things,” he begins. “You can’t let yourself fall apart like this.”
“I can’t help it,” Linda sobs. “It’s killing me to see Mom so sad.”
“Don’t make this into a bigger drama than it is,” Howard says. “You’re getting too emotional over this.”
“Too emotional? How can you say something so cold? I’m talking about putting my mother in a nursing home for the rest of her life until she dies!” Linda replies in a shocked voice as she gets out of bed and retreats to the bathroom to cry by herself.
What’s going on in this scenario? Howard is feeling powerless to do anything to help his wife with her terrible dilemma. He doesn’t know what to say, and as he lies there listening to her tears, he feels as if he’s letting her down because he can’t make things better for her. Frustrated, he tries to get her to stop feeling how she’s feeling and ends up blaming her for overreacting in order to cover up his own sense of inadequacy.
Society teaches men that their value is defined by what they do and accomplish. This makes most men solution oriented—they want to solve problems and fix whatever isn’t working. But in the world of feelings, that’s not always possible:
What Women Want Men to Know:
Often when men are faced with someone they love who is hurting, they feel powerless to do anything to take the hurt away and thus feel they’ve failed.
To cover up this feeling of failure, men may blame the women they love for having the emotions that are causing them to feel so powerless.
Whenever I explain this pattern to men, they are genuinely surprised, and even relieved—they haven’t understood why they react the way they do when their mate is upset; why sometimes they shut down, or become frustrated, irritated, or angry at their partner when she cries or is frightened. “I watch myself become more and more annoyed whenever my wife gets really vulnerable or emotional,” one man confessed to me, “and I feel terrible reacting that way, but I can’t seem to help it. You’re right—it’s because I love her and I can’t stand to see her hurting, and I don’t know what to do to make it better.”
In our chapter on communication, I’ll share some suggestions for how men can talk to a woman when she’s upset so that she feels loved, without having to have any solutions for her problem.
The Truth About Myth
Most women are not too emotional—we are emotional. And guess what? So are men, only you have a harder time showing it. The truth is, what you love about women is our sensitivity and our ability to feel, because that’s what allows us to adore you and make you feel so good!
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