Brad Coates is the author of Divorce with Decency (Fifth Edition) and practices as a divorce attorney in Honolulu. He and Dr. Diana discussed the widening gender gap. When men and women face the same passage with different needs and directions, how do marriages/relationships survive? When we talk about men’s passages, “traditional masculinity” often relies on stoicism, dominance, aggression and competitiveness. It seems that the more men cling to rigid views of masculinity, the more likely they are to be depressed, or disdainful, or lonely. How does a man, especially over fifty, move from competing to connecting? Some men feel the solution lies in fixing women: as soon as women stop taking their jobs, depression fades; as soon as women stop categorizing sexual attention as harassment, there is less loneliness. There is also the idea of the “save-your-life-wife” – that men really are more dependent on women than they might admit. A fear of intimacy often lurks. This fear may be a fear of going too deep into himself. It’s a mirror. “I’m afraid to look for the old jock image of myself and find out, ‘Hey, you’re really not that good’.” There’s more, and it’s complicated. Tune in to hear Coates and Wiley sort this out.
Click below to listen to the interview (approx. one hour):
