Your Girlfriend Having Read the Book is Not The Same as You Reading the Book
I have done a lot of self-improvement work in the course of my adult life. It’s a topic I’m very interested in, so I've read all the books, listened to all the podcasts, gone through several rounds of therapy, and been a regular at support groups.
I don’t expect that everyone has done these things, nor that they need to, but dudes, listen, Your girlfriend having read the book is not the same as you reading the book.
This thought came to me recently when I was having dinner with a man friend of mine; let’s call him Alex. We were catching up after not having seen each other in a while. Because we’ve been friends for a long time, we jumped into the deep stuff right away. As we spoke, he started tossing around phrases that I recognized from Internal Family Systems, a psychotherapy modality I’ve worked with a bit as a client before.
“Oh hey,” I said. “Have you gotten into IFS now?”
He replied enthusiastically, telling me about how the method had been working for him, and even sharing a specific story about how this had impacted his relationship with his kid.
“Wow, that’s so great. Does your therapist use this? Or did you read the book? Or podcasts or something? Seems like the IFS guy is everywhere these days.”
“Well, no,” he admitted, “I haven't read the book or anything. I learned about it from my girlfriend; she uses it a lot in her client work.”
I’m into IFS too. A therapist friend uses it, and told me about it a few years back. I found it so interesting that I got the (widely available, geared towards a lay audience) book, and I listened to a few podcasts with the author to hear the modality in practice. Then when I was looking for a new therapist, I picked one who uses this modality so I can deepen my own practice.
Because I was into the ideas and found them helpful, I followed up by utilizing the publicly available resources on the topic, reading and learning more. This is my common practice. There is no knowledge base I can think of in my life that has come solely from another person around me, nothing that I’m interested in and know a lot about simply because I’ve absorbed someone else’s labor without doing any of my own.
Certainly tons of my information and interests originate with other people, don’t misunderstand. Because of the interests of my friends, I’m more into astrology than I would be on my own, for instance, and I know more about bike repair. But when a loved one shares something that genuinely piques my own interest, I then DO MY OWN WORK to learn more. I see my friend’s knowledge as a result of their own intellectual and emotional labors, and I do not feel inherently entitled to it.
I shared this story about Alex with a woman friend of mine, and how frustrated I felt at his admission. She immediately related it to her own romantic relationship.
“That’s like David! He loves to hear about the smart things my therapist shares with me but won’t go to therapy himself.”
I suspect she is not alone in having a partner like this, peripherally interested in self-improvement, but unwilling to take on the actual tasks of improving.
I don’t think that most men+ who operate this way are aware of the impact of what they’re doing, or that they’re aware they’re doing it at all. Most people are not trying to exploit other people. But men+’s exploitation of the labor of the women+ around them is so common as to go unnoticed.
Inside capitalism, all of us are encouraged to try to get the most for the least: the most product for the least money when we’re consumers, the most labor from our workers for the lowest wages when we’re the bosses. (I teach about this in my anticapitalist pricing class, Freely.) Essentially, we are trained to exploit one another in order to protect from the possibility of being exploited ourselves.
And inside a patriarchal system like ours, men+ are disincentivized from any interest in emotionality. Feelings are to be avoided at all costs in order to hew to patriarchal notions of what a “man” really is, and the consequences for disregarding this unspoken rule can be dire. One of the most heartbreaking parts of teaching Undoing Patriarchy is hearing stories of how men+, from childhood, were ridiculed, punished, and ostracized for emoting.
These two patterns interwoven look like men+ who unconsciously exploit the intellectual labor of women+, especially in the realm of self-improvement and emotional skillbuilding. White supremacy exacerbates the issue for women+ of color.
So many men+ never manage to do their own self-reflection, deep digging, or therapeutic work, instead relying on the secondhand after-effects of the labor of the women+ in their lives.
I’m not suggesting that men+ shouldn’t learn from their partners, but when we assume that it’s fine for men+ to outsource their emotional and intellectual labor and avoid looking at themselves, we’re propping up the idea that “women are just naturally good at this stuff.” We’re inadvertently reinforcing that however good men+ are is good enough, no improvements needed. We’re corroborating a culture of fragile masculinity coupled with entitlement over women+, and good god, look around. We can see where that’s gotten us.
And you could definitely argue that hey, at least Alex is willing to learn and grow, give the guy a break! And I do, to a large extent; I wouldn't be friends with him if I didn't think he was a stand-up guy.
But honestly, I want more from the men+ in my life. I don’t want to give them cookies for the bare minimum or cut them slack for what they’re not doing. With so much compassion in my heart, I want them to do better.
It is a loving choice to hold men to a higher standard.
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