Being Manly

I've come across a couple of sites lately on the general theme of 'men's issues'. They seem to be predominantly oriented to people who want to complain about their life -- kind of the web equivalent of 'my wife doesn't understand me'. Thats a gross simplification, but I just don't respond to that. Not that I'm adverse to complaining; my wife can tell you how much and how often I will complain when I am not happy with how things are going at work. But whimpering about not being understood seems gratuitously self-indulgent to me. Hard as it is for me to make friends, I still feel that if the friends you have don't understand you, you have the choice to either work harder at the relationship, or just give it up.

Other sites are more focused in 'how to be a man' or 'how to be a father', and those are marginally more interesting to me. By the former, I'm not talking about the 'iron john' style of manliness, or the GQ don't I look good style, but rather sites talking about how to express yourself, how to understand others (by which I mean: women), and that sort of thing. They're helpful, though again, most of the time I'd think you can figure this out for yourself. I was amazed when I realized how much time one gender spends trying to understand the other -- you'd think they lived on different planets. Years ago, I summarized my knowledge of the relationship: Guys like to solve problems, and then empathize; women like to empathize, and then solve problems. Either can stop anywhere in that path. Whiles thats pretty simplistic, its usually held true for me. For more detailed knowledge, I read books by Deborah Tannen; she’s a linguistics professor who speaks with insight and without condescension about communication – how it works, how it doesn’t. For the other things -- like, what the hell is a prostate, and why should you know about prostate cancer; how do you handle money in your family -- those are interesting sites, and sometimes I do learn things.

As for how to be a father -- I'm lucky. I have a wife and daughter who make that very, very easy.