Add this article, Men Just Don’t Trust Women – And It’s A Huge Problem, to another thing I find fascinating. The author admits that he basically doesn’t trust and believe things said by his wife. He downgrades the emotional importance she attaches to a problem. He states: “Generally speaking, we (men) do not believe things when they’re told to us by women.”
Panama and I were talking about the Rolling Stone story controversy. It eventually segued to Cosby, which then segued into a realization that there’s a common thread in each of these types of stories and the tenor of the conversations surrounding them.
Trust. Well, the lack thereof. Generally speaking, we (men) do not believe things when they’re told to us by women.
[…]
This conversation is how, after five months of marriage, eight months of being engaged, and another year of whatever the hell we were doing before we got engaged, I realized I don’t trust my wife.
[…]
But you know what I don’t really trust? What I’ve never actually trusted with any women I’ve been with? Her feelings.
If she approaches me pissed about something, my first reaction is “What’s wrong?”
My typical second reaction? Before she even gets the opportunity to tell me what’s wrong? “She’s probably overreacting.”
My typical third reaction? After she expresses what’s wrong? “Ok. I hear what you’re saying, and I’ll help. But whatever you’re upset about probably really isn’t that serious.”
I’m both smart and sane, so I don’t actually say any of this aloud. But I am often thinking it. Until she convinces me otherwise, I assume that her emotional reaction to a situation is disproportionate to my opinion of what level of emotional reaction the situation calls for. Basically, if she’s on eight, I assume the situation is really a six.
I found myself nodding my head in agreement through his article because I have dealt with the situation he mentions. My husband and I go through the same thing. Full disclosure: I am the one in our relationship who feels more strongly about things (I am a blogger! And bloggers feel things strongly). I have overreacted, but he has under-reacted. I will say that a lot of my overreactions were due to his treating my 6 situation like a 3 situation which then had me ramping it up to an 8. I’m wondering how common my situation is? Okay, I know a lot of women agree with me, but I’m curious how men feel about this article and my example.
This is part of the reason why it took an entire high school football team full of women for some of us to finally just consider that Bill Cosby might not be Cliff Huxtable. It’s how, despite hearing complaints about it from girlfriends, homegirls, cousins, wives, and classmates, so many of us refused to believe how serious street harassment can be until we saw it with our own eyes. It’s why we needed to see actual video evidence before believing the things women had been saying for years about R. Kelly.
There’s an obvious parallel here with the way (many) men typically regard women’s feelings and the way (many) Whites typically regard the feelings of non-Whites. It seems like every other day I’m reading about a new poll or study showing that (many) Whites don’t believe anything Black people say about anything race/racism-related until they see it with their own eyes. Personal accounts and expressions of feelings are rationalized away; only “facts” that have been carefully vetted and verified by other Whites and certain “acceptable” Blacks are to be believed.
So, men of DL, do you do this with women? Do you believe and trust women without readjusting their outrage meter?