Can Men Evolve?

“For the first time in history, middle-class women do not need men in the traditional ways - for safety, for money, for a life. So they’re demanding instead what they always wanted but couldn’t ask for: emotional connection, presence, intimacy. Sex with enough foreplay, enough seduction, enough closeness to please them. Men are baffled not only because the needs they are being asked to fill differ so from what their fathers and grandfathers understood to be their jobs but also because full-fledged intimacy requires strengths and skills they’ve never learned. Moreover… they’re strengths and skills that were once left solely to women: Men didn’t have to develop them. This maturational mismatch may be contributing to distrust among lovers of all ages.”

From ‘Drama Kings: The Men Who Drive Strong Women Crazy by Dalma Heyn.

I really like this quote. I found it this afternoon in an outdated issue of Oprah’s magazine which I brought home from Canadian Tire after they conned me into replacing an air filter I really doubt I needed. That is still men’s little edge on the so called battle of the sexes. We can still be gullible when it comes to mechanical things like cars and emissions testing. I was 99% sure I did not need a new air filter but there was that little niggling 1% that doubted just enough to decide not to risk it.

Still, I have the power to not go back to the Canadian Tire in Barrie again. I won’t either. Actually, this is the second big strike against Canadian Tire for me and I would not go back to any of them, anywhere at this point.

But that is beside the point. I do think there is a need for men to evolve and become part of the new world where women are not docile domestic animals. Women have grown and evolved. It began out of necessity. Choose your war, really. Was it the nearer World War One or was it ages before when men went off to war for God and left women to mind the castle? Or was it so long ago that people doubt it ever happened, when women fought alongside their Celtic men and maybe even those tales of Amazon women who fought men themselves. In our recent history it was the World Wars. Women went to work in the factories, building things to keep the country going and the war machines oiled. Ironic, eh?

Women evolved to suit men, originally. Then we just kept on evolving cause women grew to understand the importance of being on their own and how they did need rights to have title to their own children and property to live on. They needed to be able to stand on their own two feet to keep their family strong and thriving. It was not a selfish thing. Though it was portrayed that way, all too often.

Now, here we are, at another point in evolution for our civilization, our social structure. Can men step up and evolve? Or have they trapped themselves? If men can not change or refuse to change will they become unnecessary? Will they be just a hindrance rather than an equal partner? It does not have to be that way. I know of very few women who want to have a family without a partner, a husband, a Dad, someone to be close to and to rely on and be relied on by in turn. No one really wants to be alone, all the time.

Still, if women are working and keeping the home and men are not contributing to keeping the home and they are not taking the time or intererst in the home and family… they become just one more job rather than a partner.