I’ve been looking recently at the barriers dividing men and women, their contrasts in perspectives and the difficulties of communication between the two.
An upset, a loss or a broken heart can put a big damper in one’s life and as a result, he or she from then on may live a lonely and isolated life. And it’s so often due to bottled up emotions and inability to deal with them.
Sports are a great outlet or release valve for human emotions. They are also an effective means of quite safely expressing and displaying our competitive forces in action.
“It’s rah, rah, rah for the home team. We’re the best. We’re the champs. We’ll show them how it’s done. Watch out you losers, we’re coming to get you!”
There’s football and hockey. There’s baseball, basketball, boxing and wrestling. There’s manly strength, brute force, dexterity and muscles on display.
Then there’s our Army, Air force, Navy and Marine Corps. “Walk tall. Stick out your chest. We’re the pros. We’re up next. Look out world, we’re the best!”
No wonder women often think that men are some kind of an undomesticated monkey species. Big apes badly in need of training and proper conditioning, is how they seem to view the masculine gender.
I must admit that I’m no expert on women and their feminine ways myself. I actually saw a book one time titled “Everything men know about women”. But when I leafed through the pages, I found them all blank!
However, I’ve been around women much more so in recent years and have gotten a better insight into their views, outlooks and gentle ways.
If a girl is lucky enough to grow up with a loving dad and brothers in her environment, then I think she is less apt to view all men as preying beasts to be avoided at all costs.
She may be aware that not every guy is a heartless predator looking at her as a trophy, who will promise her the moon and just when she needs him most will run off leaving her to cry in the night.
It seems to me that similar to the tug of war of competitive struggles between male groups, there is also an almost constant conflict between men and women. There’s the competition for roles. There are commitment difficulties, marital woes, handling of kids, household duties, money, etc.
The original romantic bliss of love and romance after seven or ten years might turn to “You don’t care about me. You don’t bring me flowers anymore. All you do is fuss, fight and argue. You don’t respect my feelings”.
A writer once compared the interactions between men and women as a marriage between Martians and Venusians.
This may be so to some extent but they are still both human, have hearts, feelings and so much in common. They both need affection, company, to be loved and cared for, to be true and faithful and to seek lasting happiness together.
Exterior forces and modern lifestyles attempt to tear them apart. The parts men and women play in society are changing radically and not always for the better. There appears to be a concerted effort in our world today to break down and tear apart the very basic fabric of society, the human family.
The last time I checked, the divorce rate was way over fifty percent, and that was years ago.
Separation and divorce of one’s parents is possibly one of the worst things that can befall a child.
A kid needs a loving, caring, staple environment. He or she needs to feel secure and wanted. Children have rights like you and I. We have a right to be here. So do they. Treating them as possessions and property to be fought over, passed off and bounced around does not bode well for their happiness.
Their formative years, be they pleasant or harsh, set the stage and the course of our future generation.
Children born out of wedlock, grandmas taking care of grandbabies, custody court battles and visitation rights are ever so commonplace today. And it’s a taboo subject for me to even mention the astronomical abortion rate that goes so unnoticed and unacknowledged.
Life is cheap. Relationships are temporary. Materialism is utmost and responsibility is antiquated.Or so it may sadly seem in our world today.
Government takes an ever-greater role in the lives of kids, inclininging parents to feel they don’t need to.
But children need the nurturing of loving parents more than the cold institutional conditioning of school.
Families have been the core of human relationships and the staple foundation of society from as far back as the days of Adam and Eve.
I think the differences and upsets dividing men and women can oftentimes be resolved by honest communication and by looking back at what brought them together in the first place ... Love.
Many times, attorneys, courts and government agencies tend to compound family problems rather than solve them.
That’s all I have to say about the problems between men and women.
I’ll leave the rest of the pages on this subject blank.
Dan can be reached at danhughoconnor@gmail.com