I saw this by Alexander Kjerulf, AKA the Chief Happiness Officer (CHO), from his blog by the same name. It’s a great article and I think pretty relevant for the discussions here.

Our thinking about the causes of stress is very simlar to how many of us think we can end our Disquiet by changing jobs, marriages or cars. And how it’s believed that much of our stress come from our work. Actually, the stress comes from how we relate to our work, not the work itself.

Alexander and I agree: The key to working with your Disquiet as I talk about it here, and the key to working with your stress, is to look at how you are relating to it. That’s where to look at making changes.

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The lost art of hanging out

When you were growing up, do you remember the great jokes
and exotic smells in barbershops? Or the sense of real
adventure in discovering treasures at the hardware store?
And how much you learned about women, politics and economics
at the garage?

These were the places where growing up, I learned about
what it means to be a man. Going with my Dad to get a
haircut, hunt for a valve for the leaky toilet or sitting
on a step drinking a coke and hanging on every word of
conversation echoing in the garage, were times when I learned
a lot. (more…)

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Here is an interesting article I read on Nicolette Beard’s man-o-pause Blog (BTW, she has a great blog, check it out). In her article, she describes a new book that may be helpful:

My friend, Eliot Katz, author of Being a Strong Man a Woman Wants, wrote me to say that he’s now marketing his book to…Women! After several months in print, he realized that his main buyers are women, who give it to men with the comment, “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you all this time.”

So what exactly are women trying to tell men?

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Adding to the soup of men’s Disquiet is the challenge of mens’ relationships with women. There’s a fair bit of angst out there among many men over the call to be a kinder gentler man. Yet when some men try that, they are often ridiculed. In an earlier post , men talked about how today’s media frequently portrays men as wimpy.

This frustration carries over to what men think women want from them. Again, my observations come from the many interviews I am conducting for my study, The Disquiet Among Men.

Something really interesting popped up around all this. When describing how hard they have been working to be more sensitive and open, many thought they were losing touch with the tougher, stronger parts of themselves. There seemed to be a forced choice between being sensitive and being strong and protective.

Are these roles at odds with one another? Can we be both? Some men thought they were getting messages that women wanted one more than the other - until there was a crisis. One man described working hard on himself for years to be kinder and gentler in response to the strong urging of his girlfriend. Yet, when there was a dead animal in the garbage, he was called in the middle of the night to dash over to his girlfriend’s house to clean it up. He said he had to remember not to forget the “macho” stuff.

Do you see the call for being more sensitive, open, caring and communicative at odds with being strong, courageous and a protector?

How about you? Are you struggling to be both?

Can you do both?

What are you finding?

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