Well as I continue reading David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man (that I discussed in a recent blog entry) I keep finding myself having aha! moments. While sometimes he can seem to push the "Me Tarzan, You Jane" envelope a bit, it seems to me that he is actually quite clear and insightful about expected roles, default roles, and what happens if partners play different roles than the 'classic' roles of Tarzan and Jane. He is not against straying from traditional roles per se, but warns us about the consequences if we stray without understanding what that implies long-term for the relationship's dynamics.
I found myself revisiting various relationships I have had in the past and seeing how what he describes "could happen if" did come to pass in those relationships. I found myself shaking my head and thinking to myself 'yup, I did that' and 'yup that happened to us' and 'yeah, I guess that's what we did', etc.
While this is not the essential issues I am refering to, here is one example that I know I have been guilty of on numerous occasions... David Deida writes, "The thing your woman is complaining about is rarely the thing she is complaining about. It is a mistake to believe the content of what she is saying, and then respond to her complaints, point by point." He gives a few examples, which not everyone will find pertinent to them but which illustrate his message quite well, namely that a complaint coming from a partner is an alert to something, the content of which is usually only somewhat-related to the true problem that is being signaled.
In that context Deida goes on to write, "you must listen to your woman more as an oracle than as an advisor. She usually is speaking in a very tangential, but revelatory, style. [...] Hear her complaint as the universe giving you signs about your life." Here Deida builds a pretty good case for realizing that women are good at realizing that there may be a problem in their man's life but not always adept at verbalizing it. If you get stuck on the details of the complaint and you don't hear the true message that is behind it, both partners end up frustrated, feeling misunderstood and often angry...
This is a bit similar to another idea Deida talks about which is the "feminine trait of wanting one thing and asking for another." He points out that many men get pissed off and wonder "Why don't you just tell me what you really want, instead of saying one thing and meaning another, expecting me to figure it out?" I have, and probably all of my guy friends have definitely felt this (and complained about this) in the past. However Deida does a pretty good job at explaining how easy it is to 'miss the point'. He suggests that the "superior man" should understand the underlying dynamic (which is basically a test of your manhood) and react to it intelligently and in a way that builds the relationship rather than whittling away at it. In psychological terms, this is similar to a double bind. According to Deida the woman verbalizes a desire for one thing that if satisfied would keep her man from satisfying a personal desire or doing what he needs to do. His idea is that if you give in to her and satisfy her need she may be happy in the short-term but the man will have undermined some of the respect she has for him. As you can see, this makes for interesting reading and there is a lot of material that could potentially turn off more than just the hard-core feminists...
The chapters of the book are short and you can get most of the message from the title of the chapter and the lengthy sub-headings that follow them. However, to me the overall message is kind of like a guide to optimal relationship building - both in a polarized (Tarzan-Jane) world and a non-polarized (we are all equal) world - and a guide to mutual understanding among men and women. A guide that, for me, appears more intelligent, more on target, and less comic-bookish than the Venus and Mars series.
I would be curious to see how many who have read this book see things, or if it suffers from an overly masculine perspective that I naturally felt comfortable with but which others may not appreciate as much.
Let me know?!
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