The Primary Gender Fantasy of women is marital access to successful men. However, not all women feel they can get or hold a financially successful man, or are even sure they want one. What all women want in a relation is a man who is committed to her. The marital commitment is the ultimate expression of committment to an individual. It says “I’m willing to say ‘til death do us part and mean it, and I’m willing to make it legal in front of others.”
Of course the divorce rate clearly tells us that we often do not mean until death will we part. The divorce rate makes the marriage committment seem like less of a serious committment, which is a double edged sword. On one hand, even making it doesn’t mean as much as it once did. On the other, failure to make a marriage committment when it is so easy to get out of marriage shows that the woman is not worthy even of the rather lax committment marriage currently represents.
With the need tied so closely to the Primary Gender Fantasy, it should come as no surprise that magazines aimed at single women frequently have articles on how to get a man to commit. It talks about men as committment-phobes who need encouragement, even entrapment or coercion, to get them to commit.
Something women must remember is that women generally desire committment, and marriage as a concept is more appealing to women than to men, especially these days. A man gains little by getting married, but he obligates himself to a lot. In a day and age where he can live with a woman and have all the benefits of being married without all the obligations, it is clear that he has little to gain.
The costs and risks, though, are considerable. First, sexual access to many attractive women remains a Primary Gender Fantasy for men. That means that he must first surrender his Primary Gender Fantasy to give a women hers. He must be relatively certain that you are the best he can do. Men not only look at a woman’s behavior to see if he thinks he can live with it for 30 years, but he also wants to consider whether he thinks he might find someone better in that time, too. Men typically make the assumption that things won’t get better when they marry.
Women as a group would do better to consider this as well. Among women who cheat on their husbands, they cheat sooner than husbands, and their number one stated reason is that they were looking for something better. They became dissatisfied with their husbands and wanted someone who would give more of what they wanted. This means that these women would probably have done well to really think about whether they wanted to be with their chosen man for the next 30 years assuming he never changed.
Second, men are afraid that things will get worse when they get married. Just as men know that they engage in certain conduct to get what they want, they assume that women engage in certain conduct to get what they want. Once they have it, men fear, the woman will change. They are also often afraid that as soon as they get married, not only will the woman change, but she will then start her project of trying to change him. Women who spend their time trying to change their husbands may be the reason wives are sometimes called a ball and chain.
An old saying claims “Men marry women hoping she will stay the same, and she doesn’t. Women marry men hoping he will change, and he doesn’t.” Many women understand that the conduct of a married woman is different than a single woman, just as the conduct and thinking of a mother is different than a woman who has no children. Likewise, they expect, the man should change as well.
However, women usually define themselves at least in part by their relationships. Men do so to a much, much less degree. Thus, he is unlikely to change just because he now has a wife or a child. Some do. Most don’t. They still like what they likes, enjoy doing what they enjoyed doing, and expect to just add this new thing to their lives, not to have it transform their identity. This sometimes baffles women who interpret this as a lack of caring.
Third, men are assuming a terrific responsibility when they marry. It means that they are likely giving up control over their paycheck. It means that all the work they do is now largely to benefit their new family, and that means that they may have to make career choices they would otherwise hate to make. The money suddenly becomes more important.
A woman probably already cooked and cleaned, and now she’ll be doing it for two. She probably won’t have to undertake any massive changes in her life because she now has an extra load of laundry to do. However, a breadwinner, man or woman, upon whose income the household relies, must make undesireable choices because of money. He might have to take a job he doesn’t want, or accept a promotion with responsibilities he’d prefer not to have.
Fourth, the man’s responsibility may be permanent, but the benefits may be temporary. When men and women divorce, he almost always ends up being the one to pay spousal support. Thus he ends up working for someone who hates him and giving her support to help her live more comfortably in her state of hating him. If there are children, he often ends up paying child support for children who are often told what a bad father he is or are used as pawns in games against him. (Men certainly do this to woman, too, but most women aren’t thinking about this when they consider marriage.)
When a man commits to marriage, he is making a committment to share his income that may extend far beyond the time he benefits from the relationship. Many men see divorced couples battling out in court, and very often, he ends up footing the legal bill for fights that she started, even if she is proven wrong in court. Even if she moves in with a boyfriend, unless they marry, the boyfriend’s income usually doesn’t count in consideration of child support, spousal support and who pays the legal bills. Then someone else is getting the benefit of the relationship for which he is paying. Even as laws change, seeing these things leaves an impression on men’s minds.
When you consider the impact these variables have on the heart of man, it is no wonder that men are often uncertain and hesitant to committ to a relationship. Men who leap to readily into committment, sometimes motivated by fear of losing her, often have serious self esteem issues. This is much like women who leap into bed with men in an attempt to get their interest and keep them. It is no universally true, but it is regularly true.
Not all committment is about getting married. There is a progression of commitment from casually dating or seeing in groups, to exclusively dating or courting, to engaged, to married. Men have sometimes played a game of getting engaged without a ring or a date as a way of holding a woman. She’s gotten so far along to getting what she wants, how could she start over with someone else?
There are also different types of committment: Committment to Her, Committment to the Relationship, and Committment to the Family, all of which are aspects of a general need for committment. Each of these is distinct and carries specific needs that are well worth addressing separately.
Committment to Her.
This is a need felt by both men and women. In a generation in which society becomes increasingy self-centered, there is a tendency to want to force others to comply with the desires of self. This, naturally, ends up including spouses. Many husbands and wives try to make the other over according to their own desires, taking their needs and wants from the other person without always much consideration for what is given. Sometimes, they give only to get.
Committment to Her and Committment to Him have to do with being committed to someone else as an individual, being committed to their lives being better, being committed to helping them accomplish their own dreams, fulfilling their needs, and helping them become all they know God made them to be.
This doesn’t mean we parent them or try to change them, but if they are trying to change themselves for the better, we encourage and help them if we can. If they are trying to accomplish something good with their lives, we cooperate and make it a team effort. If they have legitimate needs we can discover, we try to help fulfill them. If they know they ought to be doing something, fulfilling some purpose, we help facilitate that.
This isn’t forcing someone to do something because we know it is good. It isn’t nagging someone until they capitulate to what we think is best for them. This doesn’t mean that we push them to do what we think God wants them to do. We commit to who they are, which includes committing to them where they are as a person. Even if you are right, it doesn’t mean you can push an adult to do something or be something if they aren’t really ready. That will create resistance and shows that we are more committed to an idea of them than we are them as they actually are.
How this committment manifests might be different in different relationships. For my wife, she is committed to me as an individual by facilitating my training, my workouts and my writing. This sometimes takes time away from our playtime, but it is time she willingly invests in helping me be and do what I am supposed to be and supposed to do. She compliments my skill and my body, acknowledging what I’ve accomplished with my training and workouts. She discusses my writing with me, interested in how things are going with my work.
She doesn’t try to change me, though she will discuss how certain things make her feel and we can navigate a solution together. Sometimes this means she has to wait until after something else is done. There have been several times when things got especially busy and we mutually committed to working 6 days a week and Sundays as necessary until we got done with some major project. Then we promised ourselves a long weekend. She might feel isolated for a short time, but she knows it is temporary and that there will be a time to come back together.
I am committed to her as a person, helping her move forward in her work, personal development and increasing skill. This sometimes means she needs my help, or we have to take two cars to work so she can leave and do what she needs to do, or I need to give her time while I pick up some of her responsibilities. Just as my life sometimes makes more work for her, and she willingly and joyfully invests in me, her life also sometimes makes more work for me, and I am more than happy to invest in her life.
Sometimes when one, the other or both of us have come through a particularly trying time, we help give refuge. We create playtime, pampering time, or mutual relaxation to help us recharge and regroup. I might do a day of cherishing her with breakfast, dinner out, a movie or playtime for her so she can mentally regroup to tackle schoolwork. She might give me a massage or just let me watch videos to unwind and escape from the pressure for a time. This is part of how we show that we are committed to one another as individuals.
Committment to the Relationship.
Committment to the Relationship means we value the relationship and work to build it. The first level is to refrain from doing things that intentionally attack it. The next is to intentionally build it. Being committed to the relationship means making choices that benefit the relationship, even if they mean one’s personal interests are set aside for a time.
Women are often better at being willing to do this than men, but not always. My wife excels. In her case, she might be upset, but she’ll ask herself if something is a real issue, and even if it is, would saying anything help or hurt. If she concludes that saying something would only cause damage and there was nothing I could do about it, she’ll quietly deal with it herself. Most often, when she thinks about it, she concludes it’s because she’s hungry to tired, either of which put her on edge. When she realizes that, she intentionally keeps a lid on what she says because she knows what she feels isn’t real, it’s just the need for food and sleep talking. That way I don’t get in trouble with her for something I’m not doing wrong, and that helps the marriage.
Someone once asked the question, “How much of ‘me’ do I sacrifice for ‘we’?” Consider an athetic team for a moment. How much of “me” should a member of a football team sacrifice for the “we” of the team? What would happen if one person on the field suddenly decided that he wasn’t going to be a team player anymore, he was going to do his own thing? What if he decided that this was no longer about the team, but only about him? What would happen to that team?
Of course, they would lose the game. So, in similar fashion, how much of “me” does a husband or wife sacrifice for the “we” of a marriage? This is not that we sacrifice our individuality. The members of a team are still individuals, but the choices they make and the way they see things and think about things is always in context of being one member of a team.
This does not mean that we sacrifice for the other individual, but for the team, which is different. Sometimes one spouse or the other thinks their partner isn’t really a teammate, but a servant or slave, or clay to be moulded, or a project to be worked on. We should not marry such a person, and we should not treat our spouses as though they were inferiors. Teamwork means working together, every part important. The quarterback might bet the lions share of responsibility, glory or blame, but what could a quarterback do without blocker and receivers? The Bible says we are all the Body of Christ and are all important. In a marriage, both partners are of equal value and worth, they just have different positions.
After all this, it might almost seem that there is no sacrifice left to make. You get to keep your individuality. You don’t stop being you just because you start living you life in consideration for another. You don’t subsume your identity beneath that of another individual. A member of a team doesn’t stop being who he is, he just has to cooperate with the team endeavors and think in context of his position on the team. So what is there to sacrifice?
Marriage is a team endeavor. Just as one player on a sports team can’t win the game if the other players sabotage the game, one spouse cannot make a marriage into a good marriage. It takes teamwork to make a marriage good. It takes teamwork and knowledge and effort to make a marriage spectacular. Every player on the field should be thinking in terms of his or her role on the team if there will be any hope of winning the game. Both the husband and wife must think about their role in the marriage for the marriage to be crafted into something truly magnificent.
A self defense analogy helps illustrate this point well. If a husband decided to take a short cut down a blind alley, and the wife was uncertain but he insisted, and on the way they were threatened by a robber with a knife - what is the best course of action? Should she yell at him and push him? Should he then yell back and shove her? Should they start fighting with each other? What about the robber with murder on his heart? He’ll just get his way and both of them will die.
Or would it be better if they fought side by side? Would it be better if he did what he could to hit or hold back the knife while she got a heavy, blunt object and hit the criminal? Rather than fight, it would even be better if she backed off to a safe distance and let her husband deal with it. After the problem has been dealt with, that’s the time to discuss never taking this short cut again.
What if the short cut isn’t an alley, but a financial short cut? What if the robber isn’t a criminal, but a financial challenge? How does tearing at your partner help you defeat the problem? How does fighting with your partner help build the marriage? When we argue by yelling and screaming, it often means that we aren’t communicating effectively, or the other side isn’t listening. As we address our problems and conflicts that are inevitable in even the best of marriages, we must be committed enough to our marriage to address those problems in a constructive manner. We should never injure our team mate to try to make a point.
One thing that is of critical importance is to never, ever threaten the end of the relationship. If you need to end a relationship, break up. If you seriously need to get away from the marriage, then separate. If you seriously need to get out of a marriage, divorce. But don’t threaten to leave every time you get upset. If something really is bad enough to leave, leave. If it isn’t, don’t keep saying it. Every time you threaten it, you tell the other person that you place whatever issue is upsetting you as more important than the marriage.
One woman used “I want a divorce!” as a threat every time she got upset at her husband. At that moment, she meant it. As those moments piled up, it became clear to her husband that it was more important to her for him to be home exactly on time than it was to stay married. It was more important to her that he remember her favorite flower without being reminded. He couldn’t even have a bad day without her declaring her intention to leave the marriage. As they both practiced devaluing the marriage, divorce was all but inevitable. Eventually, it came. Remarriage followed some years later, and the same threat was made. This time it was taken deadly serious because she had divorced before, as had her new husband. It wasn’t an idle threat, but a real one, and until she learned to stop, it was shredding her new marriage.
We might say things like that to shock the other person, to get their attention and let them know how serious we are about what we’re saying. It works. It works just like hitting someone over the head with a baseball bat works to let someone know you’re angry with them. The problem is that it causes damage. It hurts the relationship, causing oft permanent damage. Being committed to a relationship means you don’t threaten to toss it aside every time things aren’t going just the way you like. If it really is that bad, leave. Don’t keep threatening.
Both men and women want to know that the relationship, the team, the union between husand and wife is important to them both. Spouses want to know that they can count on their partner to be on their side even when the team is losing. Spouses want to know that their team member isn’t going to start fighting against them when things get difficult, that not only might they not be there when needed most, but they might actually start playing for the other side!
Both partners in a marriage need to think in terms of being married. Both partners in any relationship need to think in terms of the relationship. What will build it? What will tear it down? Then don’t do the things that tear at it, and do the things that build it.
Committment to the Family.
This might seem strange to many men, but when married women with children were asked about their sexual turn ons, one of the top things mentioned was watching their husbands do dad stuff with the kids. When fathers play with or teach their children, many women feel a sense of intimacy and attatchment well up within them. Everyone understands that family is almost universally important to women. Considering this, it should be no surprise that women are highly interested in the men in their lives being as loving and committed to the family as she is.
Many mothers feel as though their husbands are isolated from the children. They worry that their children don’t know their dad, and that they won’t have any true connection to their father. The children tend to consume her life and her thinking as she cares for them, raises them, loves them, worries about them and does all the things a mother does. If the father isn’t involved, it makes her feel like this most critically important area of her life, the immortality of following generations, isn’t important to him. It makes her feel detached from him, too.
Ask men, and they will tell you that their family is important, that their children are important, and that they work hard to provide for them. Women want more than that. Listen to radio call in shows and watch television when women are talking about their husbands and children. If there is a complaint, it usually follows the line of “he doesn’t spend time with the kids” or “he never does anything with them,” or “he doesn’t even know his own children.”
Women want to see that their husbands love their children. Women want to know that their husbands are involved with the family. Women want leadership, that is, a man who will show the way by example - not a commander who dictates the way and gives orders. Likewise, women don’t want someone who will stifle their own leadership, especially with the children. If she primarily raises them, he should not contradict her anymore than she should contradict him. Knowing that he can be trusted to love and take care of a kids is a great comfort to a woman.