Feelings

Do Women Ever Admit That They’re Wrong?

Ron Johnson communication, Connection, Development, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, love, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

Do Women Ever Admit That They’re Wrong? What an outrageous question, it must seem. I would never have thought of asking such a question, which of course, is not a question, but rather a rhetorical question suggesting that women don’t ever admit that they’re wrong. This rhetorical question came to me from the even more outrageous statement underneath it when he frankly said, “I don’t think women ever admit that they’re wrong. It made me think, and the more I think, I have come to believe that there is some important truth in this statement, however outrageous it sounds. Let me discuss a number of things that might relate the thinking that many (certainly not all) women don’t seem to admit to ever being wrong. I want to start with a short essay on the whole concept of being “wrong.” I will discuss some cases that I have had over my years, some very recently, some many years ago where I encountered women who couldn’t seem to see, much less admit that they had done or said things wrong. Then I want to consider possible causes of this phenomenon, how men contribute or perhaps even cause this phenomenon, how women indeed know that they are wrong but fail to communicate that fact, and finally what men and women might be able to do in order to deal with this phenomenon.

What does “wrong” mean?

There are at several ways of understanding the simple word “wrong”:

  • Saying or doing something that you determine is wrong
  • Saying or doing something that someone else says is wrong
  • Doing the right thing despite there being a law against it (like Gandhi challenging British rule in India and MLJ challenging white rule in the South)
  • Doing something that is right one day and wrong the next or vice versa
  • Doing something that is wrong even though you didn’t know it was wrong
  • Doing something wrong because you don’t know how to do it right
  • And probably lots of other kinds of “wrong”

Examples

Most of my practice is devoted and dedicated to men, namely performing psychological evaluations with men, helping men understand and communicate themselves, and generally helping men be better men, fathers, husbands, workers, and friends. A modest amount of my work is with couples, some of whom I have seen off and on for years, some of whom I saw just once or twice, and some of whom I have more recently seen. Positions, ages, and other identifications of these people have been changed but I have endeavored to keep the essence true to the people as well as this outrageous consideration that women can’t admit that they’re wrong.

Jim is a pastor, which his wife, Patty, has been largely pastor’s wife with all the duties that that role requires, mother, housewife, and grandmother. These folks, both people of immaculate character, originally came to see me some 25 years ago, worked with Deb and me collectively and individually for a few years and then didn’t return until a couple of years ago. I won’t describe the marital challenges that were presented but theirs was not the terrible phenomenon of yelling and screaming that sadly so often typifies unhappy marriages. They had, however, not found a way to actually understand each other and deal with much that was truly in need of repair, both individually and then collectively. Importantly, Jim suffered a modest amount of sexual abuse as a child even though he came from a pretty good hard working farm family (the abuser was a coach and relative of the family). Patty came from a very repressive family where emotions were almost never spoken and her mother was probably schizophrenic as well as frequently threatening suicide. When Jim told Patty that he loved her during their later dating years, she said that she didn’t “understand why” he would say something, then saying that she had never heard such a statement from anyone. There has been much that we have discussed during our recent hours together but perhaps the most common talk has been that while this pastor has been in very significant pastoral and administrative positions, he has failed to keep Patty informed as to their consistently declining financial status to the point that they would file bankruptcy aside from his ethical/moral reaction against that action. He continued to feel terribly ashamed of what he has done over these years, much of which has been to afford Patty way too much liberty in spending, both on herself, traveling to be with her adult children, and giving to her children and grandchildren. So, as a result, much of our conversation has had to deal with Jim’s feeling bad about his lack of financial scrutiny and Patty’s disappointment in him. I once asked her if she felt any responsibility of the excessive expenditures, many of which came at her hands. Her response: “I left all the financial matters to Jim,” which meant that she took no responsibility for their financial dilemma. We might call this a bit of old school mother/housewife view of money, but it turned out to be more than that the more I questioned Patty. We might call this kind of “wrong” one where the person (Patty) didn’t actually know that it was irresponsible of her to spend money that they really didn’t have. Hearing Patty’s taking no responsibility knowing how much money they had in the bank, I asked her if she could tell me of any time where she had been wrong. To my immense surprise, she said that she couldn’t think of such a time. I heard, “Of course, I know that I am a sinner,” but this was soon qualified when I asked her if she could actually think of a “sin” that she had committed. She couldn’t think of one. This still amazes me, but I know that Patty worked diligently and successfully not only keeping all her feelings to herself but being carefully guarded on “not doing anything wrong” when she was growing up so as not to disturb her mother.

This might seem like an extreme case, but it is not. I have often found that women can admit to “not being imperfect and making mistakes” on the one hand but not being able to admit to anything specific that they said or do that was untoward.

Jan and Sam came to me recently, but more accurately, Jan came to me voluntarily and Sam came to me with the proverbial female hand in his back as he entered my office. Jan’s complaint was that Sam simply did a lot of things without her knowledge, much less approval. She noted that he made a “major change in profession” that affected the family finances (positively, have you) but he hadn’t informed her of the change. Sam, like many men is exceedingly independent having grown up in a family where he was ignored and rejected by his stepfather, so he learned to do things on his own, quite successfully for the most part. Jan grew up in a family where “everything was perfect and the family was always first.” These differences having been said, what ensued (and is yet ensuing) is Jan’s singular interest in Sam’s “problems” while admitting that she “is not a perfect person, I know.” When I do an intake assessment on a couple, I meet first with the couple, and then individually with each partner, the latter meetings devoted to their individual social histories. But in this case, Jan evidently informed my secretary that “one hour simply won’t be enough” even though I usually can accomplish what I need to learn about one’s social background in an hour. When I met with Sam, we hardly needed the whole hour but I learned of his history, not nearly so much, however, about any kind of problem in the family, but how he coped with it. When I met with Jan, I couldn’t keep her on the topic of her life because she spent the entire hour talking about what was wrong with Sam, and because I needed a second hour regarding her own history, I had a hard time getting anything substantial because of her desire to tell me more things that were wrong about Sam including her concerted belief that he suffered greatly as a child and had “issues” because of the suffering. When I met with the two of them together to give an interpretation of my findings and the psychological test results, it was functionally impossible for Jan to admit to any kind of error, even the tendency she has of seeing only what was wrong with Sam. Again, I was amazed that she, a very intelligent professional person, couldn’t see that she might be a bit “wrong” in being overly critical.

I see another professional couple, the woman a physician and the man a successful salesman. Simply stated, I have had to work diligently to get the woman to see that she has any significant part in the breakdown of the marriage. Granted, the man, like so many men, has a tendency to get angry at a drop of the hat, but much of his anger is his wife’s relentless telling him what to do, what is wrong with him, and otherwise criticizing him. When I was recently with them, I couldn’t get by her saying, “I am only telling the truth. Why can’t he hear it? Why is he so “defensive?” Why is he “defensive,” I thought? Because you are criticizing him all the time. Interestingly, the woman admits that she has “an anxiety disorder,” but is unwilling for me to tackle the origin of that anxiety even though the origin is her obviously seriously dysfunctional family. She comes from a family where, like Jan with whom I just spoke, where she couldn’t say anything of how she felt, whereas the man comes from an alcoholic, angry family where he learned to drink and be angry from his father.

Enough about what is “wrong” with women not admitting that they’re ever wrong. What about the men in their lives?

The men who contribute to women’s inability to admit that they’re wrong

Most of this has to do with the fact that we men have not been raised in a social environment where we talked about feelings, particularly feelings that were hurt, disappointment, discouragement, and sadness. These words, and the important concept underneath these words, were simply not part of the male environment in which we were raised. The typical male environment is one of some kind of competition, often academic or athletic and sometimes social. It is very hard to be raised as an introverted boy because boys are supposed to be extraverted. It is hard for a boy to be in school where the 3 R’s are all hard for him. It is hard for a boy to be raised where he’s got the 3 R’s but not the athletic interest, much less the ability to play sports. And importantly, it is very common for the emotions of joy and anger to dominate a boy’s emotional environment, thus abandoning the emotions of fear and sadness. Girls grow up with fear and sadness all the time especially in middle school (junior high) and are not good at being angry. This social environment leads to men being openly angry with everyone potentially and women taking a more circuitous route of channeling anger into criticism, not unlike the drama and gossip they learned about in middle school.

So we have a kind of unconscious conspiracy among men and women with the whole business of feelings and the subcategory of emotions: men get angry and feel joy; women get sad and feel fear. Granted, this is a blanket statement, but more true than false. And when men really find sadness, they become profoundly depressed leading to the fact that men are six times more likely to suicide than women despite the fact that women are 10 times more likely to threaten suicide. And when men find fear, they are quite overwhelmed with it. When women find anger, they turn it into vitriol neglecting their own part in whatever the discussion was.

My work with men, which as I said is my primary work, is almost always about helping them know the breath of their feelings, like hurt and disappointment, and then the underlying emotion that is always sadness. I have heard many men say, “I’ve never told anyone this before, but….” And if I am really helpful with men, I help them conquer anger…entirely helping them understand that anger is always secondary behind hurt, disappointment, and sadness. And all of these feelings are based on something that one loves…and has lost. So, the task in helping women get over their seeming inability to admit to being wrong lies primarily with men getting over being angry all the time and admitting that they have a “love problem,” as I say, namely having lost something that he has loved but also having skipped the sadness that should always result from any loss.

My singular suggestion to women about being wrong is this: You might be “right” with what you see but wrong in saying it, which can then tend you to see primarily what is wrong with him more than what might be wrong with you.

Wanting it Both Ways

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

I have often “wanted it both ways” in many of life’s circumstances:

  • I want to eat as much sugar as I want. I also want to have low glucose in my blood
  • I want to lose weight. I also want to eat too much food at night
  • I want to slim down my belly. I don’t want to do the planking that might help
  • I want to have friends who know me. I don’t want them to know enough to know me
  • I want to be able to play good basketball. I don’t want to practice enough to do that
  • I want to work a lot (because I enjoy what I do). I don’t want the fatigue that comes with too much work
  • I want to write blogs without grammatical/spelling errors. I don’t want to do the careful editing required to do that
  • I want to go to Europe. I don’t want to have to abide by the Covid rules to do so
  • When in college I wanted to postpone studying until the wee hours of Sunday night with the result of my grades suffering and restricting me in future endeavors. I wanted people to see that I am capable and intelligent without the “union card” of a good GPA.
  • …and many more

You might have such dilemmas or perhaps more serious ones like some of the people with whom I engage in some way:

  • A family individual who seriously assaulted me with vicious gossip some time ago, but wants to have a good relationship with me without apologizing for his/her action
  • Another family member who created a huge mess in my house that I found after he/she left the house. They also want to have a trusting relationship with me
  • The patient for whom I did an extensive neuropsychological evaluation that cost her pennies but she wasn’t didn’t think I spent enough time with her to write the report I did so she won’t pay the pennies until she is satisfied.
  • The guy who races by me on the right side on the interstate together with a one-finger salute because he is not satisfied that I am driving only the speed limit

Or, you may be like some of my patients who want it both ways, like:

  • The guy who wants his wife to trust him but isn’t honest with him
  • The guy who wants to get over the basic fear of life that has plagued him all his life but doesn’t want to face the terror of the origin of this fear
  • The introverted man who wants people to love him but is unable to reveal enough of himself to allow people to see him enough to love him
  • The guy who is gay but wants to be married and have children
  • The guy who is very bright but quite under-employed because of his lack of advanced education, but doesn’t want to go to college in order to be professionally satisfied
  • The kid who wants to be liked but is unable to manage his selfishness in order to have people like him
  • The mom who wants her child to grow up but can’t let go of her undue mothering of him
  • The dad who wants to have a relationship with his introverted son but doesn’t want to affirm the challenge of knowing and loving an introvert
  • The extravert who says anything that comes to his mind but doesn’t want the effects of many people being irritated with him.
  • The guy who wants to drink as much as he can but doesn’t want to suffer the negative effects his drinking has on his family
  • The man who tends to tell people what they should do because he is a high boundary person but also wants low boundary people to like him
  • The guy who married the wrong woman but wants to magically fix that by staying with her despite his being unable to love her
  • The adolescent who wants to reserve sex for marriage but gives herself to boys for the sake of “being loved”
  • The man who wants to express his beliefs openly but is afraid of losing friends as a result, so he has no friends
  • The man who was abusive with his wife for 30-odd years but wants her to “forgive and forget” now that he has admitted his error
  • The man who did not maintain a good financial basis in his life but wants some kind of miracle to bail him out of his dilemma
  • The man who has distrusted everyone all his life but wants to “just learn to trust” people so he can have a meaningful relationship
  • The man who has been married unsuccessfully five times because he “needed” a mother figure but wants to have a companion, not a mother
  • The man who used illicit and expensive drugs for 10 years but also wants to have financial security
  • The man who makes a lot of money in a job he hates but doesn’t want to change jobs because he will not make as much money in a profession he would really like to do
  • The man who stays legally married and as such damages his current relationship because he needs the “benefits” of his wife’s insurance

These and many more are but some of the people in my office who “want it both ways.” They want what they want and then they want something else that is not consistent with their first wants. In most cases, these people have made understandable mistakes in their lives, the things that we all do, but they don’t want to pay the price for what they have done.

Paying the price

  • The two family members I mentioned above have caused great damage to me psychologically but aren’t willing to pay the price for their errors. The price would be a simple apology without justification, something that most people seem unable to do readily.
  • The people who have not pursued the education necessary to achieve a place in society and in a profession that suits them don’t want to pay the price of going back to school and doing so. They would rather pay the price of unhappiness in their current lives.
  • The people who entered intimate relationships honorably but somehow knowing that the relationship was not good for them. They don’t want the stigma of a divorce so they pay the price for ongoing personal unhappiness
  • The man who suffered great damage from his alcoholic home, something that caused him to suffer through life so much so that his life is largely suffering and surviving, not thriving. He is unwilling to pay the price of deep therapy to heal his early wounds.
  • The man of Muslim heritage and birth who has hidden his homosexuality all his life and suffered failure in relationships, family, and vocation. He isn’t willing to pay the price of rejection in order to have a meaningful life.

I think we all “want it both ways” and don’t want to “pay the price.” Paying the price for an honest, loving, and meaningful life can be huge, but there is always the price. Sometimes, the price is excessive and it is just not possible to pay the price, but I think this is rare. More often, we carry childlike beliefs that we can do as we want and not pay the price in later years. I pay the price for not attending to the potential damage to my lungs from working around asbestos. Now, I must cope with how to live with the results or find some way to rectify it. Whatever I do, I will be paying the price because I can’t have it both ways.

Love V: Love Problems

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, love, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

This is (probably) the last of the blogs on love. Previously, we looked at a bit of theory of love, “not being love right”, temperament-based love, and being “seen” so you could be loved.  This blog will be devoted to a very basic concept that we have developed about feelings, emotions, and love. If you have read our blogs or the books we have written, you will be familiar with the concept of “love problems,” but allow me to summarize.

Theory of feelings

We propose that “feelings” are a central ingredient of human existence, that they are an so important that they are undefinable, like time, space, and love, and that they are never wrong because they emanate from our souls, which are most certainly never wrong. That having been said, the expression of these feelings can be “wrong,” or at the very least, inadequate. We experience our feelings sequentially physically, emotionally, cognitively, and actively (which includes speaking). The physical and emotional aspects of our experience of feelings are both unconscious, while the cognitive and active experiences are conscious. Furthermore, we usually have a natural tendency to note the experience of feelings in one of these ways, and then we may have the same or a different means of expressing these feelings. Perhaps the most prominent element in the experience and expression of feelings is within the emotional range although many people are much more cognitive or active, and some are almost entirely physical.

Theory of emotions

You will note that we make an important distinction between feelings and emotions, with emotions being a subset of feelings. We propose that there are four basic emotions, and then combinations, cognates, and expressions of these emotions. Importantly, all of the emotions have to do with love in some way. These four basic emotions have to do with time, namely:

  • Joy is the experience in of loving something in the present
  • Sadness is the experience of losing something that I love in the present
  • Anger is the experience of feeling the loss of something in the past
  • Fear is the experience of feeling the possible loss of something in the future.

Note that all of the emotions relate in some way to something that I love. Note further that three of these four emotions have to do with loss: present loss leads to sadness, past loss leads to anger, and future loss leads to fear.

Love problems and emotions

So, why do we talk about “problems” with love? We do that because we have so much difficulty with the emotions surrounding sadness, anger, and fear. We somehow think that we should be joyful all the time. Two important facts are related to this theory of feelings and emotions: (1) love is at center of life and (2) we lose everything we love…eventually. We find that people have trouble losing something that they love, whether that loss is in the past, the present, or the future. We try to help people (1) trust that their feelings are never wrong, (2) that their feelings erupt towards loving something, and (3) this love always leads to some kind of joy.

What we love is very important to notice because we do not restrict the concept of love to the love people. Rather, we suggest that we can love anything with equal passion. Many people have a primary orientation towards love of people, but many more have just as deep a love for nature, property, ideas, history, science, or something else, whether physical or theoretical. I wrote a bit about this in the Love III blog, Temperamental Love. Expanding love beyond the love of people is very important if we are to understand each other. Thus, it is hard for people with what we call the “lover” temperament to understand “caretaker” people who love property more deeply than people. As you can see, this can lead to relational problems, but I am not speaking so much about relationships as I am speaking of just what happens when we love something. Importantly, whatever we love, we will eventually lose. That is the “love problem.”

Sadness: this is the natural emotion that erupts from losing something. When I am sad, I am in the present. I may be thinking of something that I loved and lost in the past, but if I am sad about that loss, I experience it in the present. We will examine potential loss in the future momentarily.

Anger: this is very important because anger is also a “love problem.” If I am angry, I have lost something in the past, the past being a few minutes ago or a few years ago. We refer to anger as delusional, namely being an emotion that erupts as a way of changing the past. Why do I throw the hammer and swear when I missed the nail? Because I (delusionally) think that this hammer-throwing expression of anger will change the fact that I missed the hammer.

Fear: this is equally important because if I am afraid that I will lose something in the future. This “something” could be a dollar on a bet, a good friendship, a job, or anything. Fear is also delusional because if I think/worry/fret about what I might lose in the future, this anxiety will somehow change the future.

As you can see, all losses have to do with love. So, how do we cope with loss?

Coping with loss is a love problem

We normally cope with loss with sadness, anger, or fear. We content that we need to be sadder and hence less angry and less afraid. But this is no easy task. The difficulty with facing loss, at least in America, is the fact that our culture is not particularly emotionally mature. We do not generally understand emotions and allow them to run their natural course. Particularly, we tend to get angry way too easily and stay angry longer, and likewise we get way too worried and stay with worry way too long. Both emotions are hard on one’s health, work, play, relationships, and life at large.

It is hard enough to allow to be sad, especially for us men because sadness is normally portrayed as weakness. Indeed, there are some people that come to sadness and tears so easily that it seems to be an escape from reality. But the larger number of people simply haven’t found a way to be sad, which means loving, losing, feeling sad, and getting over being sad. Getting over being sad? What does that mean? It means allowing sadness to run its course. The key of all of these emotions is that sadness ends. Anger doesn’t end. Fear doesn’t end. Sadness ends…if we allow it to run its course and finish. However, this is a challenge because I am truly sad, that moment of my existence is filled with the feeling (= intuition) that I will be sad forever. Simply put, I need to allow myself the freedom to be sad frequently enough to get familiar with the process:

  • Love something
  • Enjoy this something
  • Lose this something for some reason
  • Feel sad
  • Allow sadness to run its course
  • Finish being sad
  • Love again
  • Love better knowing that whatever I love, I will lose.

Dealing with anger and fear are more difficult but the “cure” for these emotions (the subtitle of our book, The Positive Power of Sadness, is to learn to be sad. It is easier with anger, but it is not easy. Whenever I am angry, I have a “love problem,” i.e. I have lost something that I loved, whether it is the nail I was hammering or my favorite friend. I got angry because I raced right past the sadness of losing my friend or hammer and got “delusionally” angry. Unfortunately, anger doesn’t end like sadness. It just metastasizes into my physical, cognitive, emotional, and relational systems and becomes an unfortunate and harmful part of those systems. The cure for anger is to realize that I love something and lost it. I have a love problem when I’m angry.

If anger is hard to move back to sadness, fear is much harder largely because when I am afraid, my brain gets into the action and “protects” me by churning up cortisol so that I can be prepared to fight. The brain doesn’t know that I am thinking/worrying about something in the future because the brain, as a machine, doesn’t understand the future. The brain is singularly in the present and has all it can do in order to keep you alive with blood flow and breathing. So, while fear is also a love problem, it is much harder to “cure”.

Curing anger and fear

I say what many patients think is an outrageous statement: “I am going to help you get to the place where you are never afraid and never angry. Just how will I propose to do that? I will help you feel the sadness that is under both fear and anger, and the love that is under the sadness.

It’s easier to “cure” anger than fear. If I am angry, I can point to a specific loss, like someone who hated me for some reason. I lost his/her approval. Curing the anger I feel towards him will simply be facing the fact that I loved him and loved our relationship, but now I have lost both. I have a love problem. If I stick with the love, I will eventually feel sad, my sadness will run a course, I will finish being sad, and then I can go on with my life. Perhaps, I will find a way to reinstate my friendship with my friend or establish another friendship. Or maybe I will just fix the garage up as a way of loving a fixed up garage. I will replace anger with sadness and when sadness, I will love something better, perhaps realizing that garages have a nasty tendency to deteriorate over time leading to…sadness.

It’s harder to cure fear, but this is how we try to help people do it. I ask the individual to picture the potential loss, attempt to replace the fear of loss with actual loss and allow the feeling of sadness to erupt. This is simple but very hard to do. It is hard because people (their brains) are so use to worrying that doing this anticipatory loss feeling of sadness is quite a challenge. Properly done, you will actually feel the potential loss and sadness and love in the present. This will cure your anxiety. A lot harder than it sounds because you are going against the brain, the culture, and the individual’s resistance to feeling anticipatory sadness.

Sadness is a lover problem. So are anger and fear. But sadness ends and makes you a better person and a more loving person because you know that you love but for a moment, however long that moment is. Anger and fear do no such thing.