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He and She

How we are raised to not understand each other.

By Robert BurtonPublished 5 years ago 8 min read
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He looked up to the men around him for guidance on what to do, what to say, and how to say it. The men around him were his teachers, but not all teaching was done with words. He was taught that action is what is most important, never mind what you say. The issue is what you do, or what you fail to do. For him, in his world, what you do defines who you are. He observed and learned from the men around to speak loudest with action. As a boy, he was given action figures, screamed action words, and his free time was spent performing a plethora of different actions such as running, jumping, and hitting things.

He had balls, because in his world you had to. All types of balls—footballs, baseballs, basketballs, and he spent hours playing with his balls. He competed with the other boys too, because he had to learn that in the boys’ world it’s the winners that get all the nice things. So his first lesson was that competition is life: The reason to compete is to win, and winning involves pain. Then he was taught that men don’t cry when they feel that pain. He needs to be tough, he shouldn’t show that he feels that pain; hell, he shouldn’t show any feelings at all. Feelings are weakness. He processes the world based on how he thinks.

When he got a little older, he learned that the world is supposed to be his oyster, he can open it, explore it and eat it as he wills. He could feel that he was programmed to spread his seed as much as possible, to fill the entire field with it. He sees, he conquers, and he comes. He is visual, because he goes after what he sees, and if he likes what he sees then he chases it. And he desires to dominate all, and even who, that he sees. He was told, “Go sow your wild oats,” and, “Play around before you settle down." He was taught that marriage was prison, and prison was for those who had finished their oysters.

He learned that he wasn’t born to remain a boy; instead, he was born to become a man. He didn’t know that all that he would learn about being a man was simply a social construction that society had agreed upon. He never learned who created these constructions, only that they consisted of standards that were imposed upon him, and that he was expected to meet them.

He convinced himself, and was thoroughly convinced, that he was only desirable in accordance to his achievements. He was taught that if he didn’t have the material accouterments, then no one would want him. So he decided to focus on getting money, because he allowed the world to convince him, or either he deceivingly convinced himself, that money was a direct measurement of his worth. No money, no love. He had friends, and they were all just like him. Even as a boy, his friends were all boys, and when he became a man, his friends were all men. And that’s why he was so confused when he met her.

She was given dolls, babies and things that resembled kitchens and houses. She played house, had a play husband, and started planning her wedding at a young age. She was raised to be one half of a social unit. Marriage and motherhood were the only things in her life that would resemble worth. She was told that she had to be cute, nice, and sweet, not aggressive, strong, or ambitious. She was told not to do “boy” things, and not to wear “boy clothes,” and not to “act like a man.” She was taught to sit a certain way, and eat a certain way, and that she was to be “a lady.”

She was allowed to cry, she was allowed to feel, and that is good. She processed the entire world and all the souls in it based on how they made her feel. Her power came from the receptive, and her cunning came from not having as much power, at least in society. She learned a different type of power: The power of the powerless; the power to control those with power by having the power of knowledge of her self and of the powerful. With this power she learned to get her way, and she became very good at it. She learned to get what she wanted, not by force, but by coercion. Some told her this is bad, but they never thought to give her a seat at the very table of power that they denied her access to.

She was lied to. She was told that if she didn’t have a man by a certain time that she was worthless and left over. Once she accomplished finding a husband, she was told that she had to have children by a certain time or she would “miss her chance.” And if she did neither, she was told that she was less-than. So she spends so much of her time trying to find companionship, attaching her self to others that weren’t reared to think like she does and are thought to have limitless time. It’s almost as if she has to convince them. However, she is considerably more selective, confused by why she chooses those with resources who can provide her a sense of security over those who might be more physically attractive. But she really doesn’t understand why he doesn’t want to commit, and commit with haste. Because who wants to be alone?

Nobody wants to be alone and heaven forbid anyone has to die alone, so that might be the reason they finally decided to be together. He and She became “we," and they forged themselves into “Us." However, this turned out to be a daunting task. When he met her, he met her representation, not the essence of who she really was. She saw and looked at him, and while she liked what she saw she fell in love with the idea of who he was instead of the person who he really was. Subsequently, they had a hell of a time getting to know who the other actually was. Time and money had to be spent, agonized over and invested. Text messages, and how much time it took to reply to them had to be analyzed and dissected. Insecurities and vulnerabilities brought into the light.

They sought happiness in the hope that they would complete each other, as if they were two pieces of a puzzle. They strove to make one person everything to the other, no matter how impossible that was. He saw her as the prize due to him for his success at material accumulation. To him, she was what he deserved for accumulating all those material things. Now he and all that he was taught he should be, was validated. She saw him as the proceeds of her success at matronly affection. To her, he was proof of finally being at the top of the hierarchy of womanhood: attached to a man committed to her. Now she and all that she was taught that she should be, was validated. However, each faltered under the pressure of being the other’s doctor, lawyer, priest, therapist, friend, lover, mother, wife, sister, brother, father, and on and on, ad nauseam.

They placed expectations on each other, and then found themselves angry when they weren’t met. They placed hopes and dreams on the other and became distraught when they were proven to be illusions. And if that weren’t enough, they failed to see that everything that they wanted in the other, everything they desired in the other, was already within them selves. In fact, they didn’t love each other so much as they loved what they saw of themselves in the other. If only they knew: That which we love is simply a reflection of ourselves. However, their biggest problem was that they never were really able to see that the other was just as human, just as emotional, just as rational and just as much of a person—possessing all of the vicissitudes and superfluities of life—as they were. On another planet and in another life, men and women would be raised to see each other as two different forms of people, two different types of the same type of person, just simply human but with complementary equipment and biological form. Not two different competing teams, ensconced in a token economy where each team is trying to “win” as many tokens as possible, in order to turn them in for the most socially valuable mate. In this hypothetical world we wouldn’t rear children in such a way that creates a dissonance—such a vast, gaping and fearful distance between two souls grasping for union with each other. In so many ways they were raised to fail at achieving what they truly wanted so badly. Even before they met each other, he and she desired union, yet they weren’t given the proper tools to erect such an edifice.

Perhaps, if only from the very beginning, they weren’t raised as two separate polemical entities, if only they weren’t caused to feel and think that the other was some strange creature, or perhaps from another planet. If only they weren’t taught to be so different, one being taught that they should behave in this way and the other one taught the opposite. If only, they had gotten to know each other more from the beginning and then perhaps, just maybe, each person would have seen the person in the other person from the start.

humanity
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About the Creator

Robert Burton

A world traveler and student of life, people and the human mind. I've been molded by my origins in The American South, six years of life in The People's Republic of China and my passion for life. I live, I learn and then I write about it.

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