Memories...
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
ON THE GLASS EGO (EXTRACTED FROM THE OPRAH MAGAZINE)
Here's a closely guarded secret: Women have more influence over men than they think. Psychologist Jay Carter talks to Michelle Burford about male self-esteem, the criticism that could demolish a man and what male intimacy is really about.
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Twenty-six years of counseling men and couples have given Jay Carter an unusually clear window into men's hearts and minds. Carter's observations are so eye-opening that we asked him about everything from finding the key to a man's inner life to the best way keep from making him a home-improvement project:
Q: You've written that most women have no idea of their power to wound men. Where does this power originate?
A: During a boy's most important developmental period—his first five years—he usually gets his self-esteem from his mother. I think some of Freud's theories are hogwash, but I believe he was right about at least one: Whereas a girl might choose to grow up to become like her mother in certain ways, a boy tries to be becoming to his mother—to make her proud. Years later, when he meets someone he wants to spend his life with, he unconsciously gives her what I call his "jujube doll"—a kind of voodoo-like name I have for the part of a man's self-esteem that's vulnerable to a woman's opinion of him. If she sticks a pin in his doll, he recoils. Most women I talk with don't realize what kind of influence they have over men.
Q: You've said that when a woman begins to care deeply for a man, he becomes her home-improvement project. Why?
A: A woman often marries a man for his potential. If women married men for who they actually were, there would be far fewer marriages. When a woman loves a man, she says to herself, 'I could improve him. Once we're together, things will be different.' Since I began my practice in 1977, I've heard this refrain hundreds of times. I try to get it across to the woman that what she sees is what she gets. This is him. If he's drinking every Friday and Saturday night, look forward to a lifetime of weekend alcoholism. He may cut out Friday, but he'll still be a drinker.
Q: Once a man has snatched away his "jujube doll," can a woman ever get it back?
A: Yes. She can sit down with him and say something like 'It wasn't my intention to hurt you, but I have. I really do think you're a wonderful man.' He may never admit that there are heel marks all over his doll, but if she approaches him this way, he'll slowly open up again.
Q: After nearly three decades of counseling men, do you think most really want to please women?
A: Oh, yes! And I believe that a man will feel even more motivated to please a woman he loves if he knows that, in general, she already thinks the world of him. Once a woman tells a man how responsible and caring he is, he'll usually do all he can to live up to that image. Just to make her proud, he'll rise up and move mountains.
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I think the last paragraph is damn true for guys man wahhaha. 'Rise up and move mountains' heh heh. Very true!
