10 Conversations You Need to Have with Your Children by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Author:Rabbi Shmuley Boteach [Shmuley Boteach]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061735905
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

>>

In later years, I worked at becoming more like him—at becoming a more feminine and emotionally available man. Or, as I’ve taken to calling it, a Circle Man. I want to be domesticated, I want to be less linear and more pliable, less goal-oriented and more means-oriented. I want to be able to speak to my wife about the things that weigh on my heart, and I want to learn to cut through all of the emotional baggage that so often saddles so many men, myself included.

This reminds me of another story: Some months ago, a man came to see me for counseling. He had recently switched jobs, and things weren’t going well, and he was having a very tough time. So I asked him, “Do you talk to your wife about these things?” And he said, “No.” And I asked, “Why not?” And he just shut down—I could literally see him shutting down. “Because I don’t want to,” he said. “I’m just not comfortable with it.”

I shared this story with my children and expounded further: “Too many men these days have the same problem. They refuse to get in touch with the softer side of themselves, their feminine side. They won’t talk about pain, or about feelings of failure, or about the things that really count, because they are afraid to appear weak. They think people will look at them as failures. So they hold everything inside, giving their emotions no outlet, and their feelings gnaw away at them and destroy their lives. Often, the first thing to be destroyed is the marriage. These men do not allow their wives to fulfill their roles as nurturers. A woman cannot nurture a man who shows no emotion. And a man who is unable to show emotion has little understanding of the feminine, both without and within.”

This reminded me of yet another story, one that actually illustrates how far such a man might fall, and I shared that with them, too. “I know a man, I’ll call him George, whose wife informed him, suddenly and unexpectedly, that she wanted to separate. The man was absolutely shattered. The marriage had not been perfect, and he did not pretend to have been a perfect husband, but he had a two-year-old son, and he didn’t want to put him through a divorce. In the interest of making things easier on his wife and son, and in the hopes that they might reconcile, George immediately offered to move into a nearby hotel. He had a few good friends, of course, and they would phone him from time to time, and take him to lunch or to dinner and let him talk, which is what he most needed at that difficult time. But one of the friends—let’s call him Mark—never phoned, and this was odd and disturbing because Mark had been very much part of George’s life. Mark was married, and he had a little girl the same age as George’s son, and they had often

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.