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Men vs. Women: 6 Stereotypical Differences

For many years, I stayed out of the “men vs. women” debate, mainly because of my dad. He is an old man who grew up in a very patriarchal and chauvinistic society, yet is the most admirable example of gender equality.

My dad cooked, took care of the kids, helped us with our did homework, cleaned the house (inside and outside), brushed our hair, did arts and craft and was never ashamed of any of it. He had four daughters and one son and I thought he was fair and equal in his attitude to boys and girls.

In fact, my dad’s behavior cluttered my outlook on life in a way, because whenever I heard someone talking about the stereotypical man, I said, “This is not true, because my dad is different”. Now, I have to admit that I was wrong. There is something true about the stereotypes about men and my dad was the odd one out.

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From the Life Coaching Deck: Stop Making More Money

Liam was a very handsome man. When he entered my life coaching deck, I didn’t believe he was almost 40 years old. He looked 25 and I wondered what kind of woman would leave such a great-looking guy. On his client details form, he wrote that he had two boys and that his wife had left home suddenly and took the boys with her.

If he was the first man who came to coaching because his wife had left all of a sudden, I would have thought that something was wrong with his wife. Who on Earth leaves home all of a sudden? With two boys? After 12 years of marriage? But Liam was not the first and, unfortunately, will not be the last man whose wife left all of a sudden.

During the initial assessment of his life, he told a story of a great love, two well established professionals, parenting maturely, living in their own house and even owning an investment property. Their life was the ultimate picture of a perfect marriage.

“When did the relationship start shaking?” I asked Liam, trying to find the most reasonable explanation for “all of a sudden”. He said that it had started when his youngest daughter was born, about 4 years earlier, and then he told me the typical story of a marriage that brings wives to leave “all of a sudden”.

He worked until 8 or 9pm some days. He worked on weekends. His main goal was to make more money. For every problem he had at home, his solution was making more money. When his wife wanted him to take a day off and spend time with the family, his mind went straight to “If I made enough money, I wouldn’t have to go to work so many hours and then I could be with my family”.

This post is part 14 of 17 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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Do Women Talk More Than Men? (Poll)

I’ve always believed that women talk more than men. I don’t know why. I’ve just had this belief for many years, even though I’ve been together with a man who talks more than I do.

If I had to come to conclusions about men and women’s talking habits based on my personal experience, I would say that men talked 50% to 70% more than women. Yet I still think women talk more. I think I have held this belief since childhood, because there is a social belief that women talk too much and I never bothered to question it.

In my parents’ house, my mom didn’t talk more than my dad. There were four sisters in the house, and we definitely talked more than our brother, who was very quiet. I always just thought my personal circumstances were different from the average.

When I got married, I thought I was just not a typical woman and my husband, Gal, was not a typical man. But maybe this is how you see yourself and your partner, too…

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Does Valentine’s Day Promote Violence?

Valentine’s Day is coming soon. My junk mail is full of advertisements for gifts for the Valentine’s Day couple. Just like every year, I am a little disgusted. Valentine’s Day, which is supposedly a day to share and express love for each other, is in fact a day that promotes very specific gender stereotypes – aggressiveness and violence in men, and vanity in women. You might say I am over reacting but I dare you to look at Valentine’s Day ads and see how stereotypical they are. Women are perceived as obsessed with their looks and man are obsessed with anger, violence, sex, aggressiveness and technology.

Since when do women only care about their beauty? It is a sad state of our a society if everyone believes the Valentine’s Day ads that think women are so shallow and dumb that they only care about their looks.

Since when do men only want to be perceived as strong and aggressive? It is a sad state of our a society if everyone believes the Valentine’s Day ads that think men are so shallow, angry, aggressive and childish that they will do anything to make themselves feel “manly”.

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You Kick Like a Girl

As a young girl, I grew up in a small town where kids played in the street until their parents called them home for dinner. It was a small street and playing there was much like playing in your front yard. You could count about 10 steps from your front door to the street. It was a generation when most people had many kids. My family was one of the smallest – only 5 kids. Most of my friends had 6 or 7 siblings.

I was very much a tomboy and never did things “like a girl”. I played with the boys, mainly because there were more of them than girls. It seemed very natural for me to hang around them, even at night, when we went to the orchards to make bonfires. I think they did not notice I was a girl until I started wearing a bra. Until then, I was their equal – chasing one another on the street, riding bikes, fighting or playing soccer, there was no difference between us.

At home was another matter.

In my family, the roles of boys and girls were very clear – boys played rough while girls cleaned and cared for the family. My mom could not bear the thought of me hanging around the boys so much. So she told me I should act “like a girl”, because with so many bruises and cuts I would never be allowed to learn ballet.

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Postnatal Depression Related to Domestic Abuse

Postnatal depression and other mental health problems related to pregnancy and childbirth are recently getting a lot of attention.

Many mothers become very sensitive while going through the stressful period of pregnancy and childbirth. They are much more susceptible to mental health challenges such as postnatal depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

For many years, these disorders were linked to hormonal changes and the trauma of the birth itself. Recently, this view has begun to be criticized. It puts a lot of pressure on mothers and does not examine other reasons for the mental challenges women go though after pregnancy and giving birth.

A study done by researchers from North Carolina State University, Simon Fraser University and the University of British Colombia wanted to check the relationship between partner abuse and women’s postpartum mental health. They measured various types of abuse, including physical, psychological and sexual, and mental health disorders, including depression, stress, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. They discovered big correlations.

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Save Your Marriage: 10 Tips to Re-Building Trust

Trust is a very important ingredient in relationships and when it is broken, it is hard to mend. In all the years I have been coaching couples, the most challenging were those whose trust had been broken.

My mom used to tell me, “it takes a long time to milk a cow but seconds to spill the milk in the bucket”. Trust is just the same. It takes a long time to build and seconds to destroy. My first suggestion for all you couple is to guard their trust at all costs because it is one of the hardest things to fix.

Trust is built on honesty and telling the truth. In every marriage, there is an agreement to be truthful. As soon as one person lies, even once, it is like forming a tiny crack in the milk buckets which slowly lets out all the milk.

This post is part 21 of 30 in the series Save Your Marriage

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How to Feel Good: Smiling

The tip for today is a very simple way to feel good, instantly – smiling.

The good thing about smiling is that it a two way street – smiling creates a happy feeling, and feeling happy makes you smile. It does not matter where you start – the feeling or the smile. When we experience joy, the muscles in our brain contract and start a positive loop of feeling even more joy. This is not a new science. As early as the 1870s, Charles Darwin first suggested that facial expressions did not just express emotions, but could actually induce them.

Smiling has been studied for years. In 1989, psychologist Robert Zajonc compared the mood of participants asked to make the long “eee” sound (which involves the same muscles as smiling) and those who were asked to make a long “ooo” sound (which involves the same muscles as frowning). Zajonc found that the people who made the “eee” sound felt much better.

This post is part 2 of 4 in the series How to Feel Good

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Fathering Adventures

Sometimes, the Universe seems to conspire to make us do something. In this case, I think it wants me to write about how important fathers are in the life of their children. We keep focusing on parenting in this blog, but there is a difference between mothering and fathering, which we have not discussed much.

I have a friend who goes on a men’s camp every year. When his boys were young, he went by himself and felt very supported there. As soon as his boys turned 13 and were allowed to go with him, away they went together and spent a great time bonding – singing, dancing, doing physical exercise and watching performances. He has been nagging me to come with him on that camp for a few years now, saying there is something special about the freedom and “safe space” it provides.

So far, I have not gone.

In the past few months, Ronit worked with several boys whose father had died or spent a lot of time away from home. Whenever we talked about them, I kept having the feeling that although they were young (5 to 8 years old), they felt like little men. I felt they saw themselves as somewhat responsible for the wellbeing of their family and had to fill the very large shoes of their absent father.

That was not enough either.

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Opportunities of a Work-at-Home Dad

When Gal was a working dad, he spent his time far away from lots of the things that happened at home. He was a working dad for over 16 years. Luckily for us, he was not the working late type of dad, more like a 9 to 5 version, but you know that unless your workplace is a 2-minute walk from home, commute becomes a big time waster too. If you add up rush-hour traffic, for the kids (and myself), Gal was away every day of the week from 7 to 5:30 (and I have to say that at work, he was the only one that said “no” to working late or going out for drinks, because he wanted to have dinner with the kids every night and put them to sleep).

Gal had to make a lot of efforts to come home in time for dinner. I think it was a constant struggle. Working in IT companies, where working until midnight and not having a life was the norm, keeping his family values was not easy.

You are probably asking yourself by now why I am writing this.

I am writing for all the dads reading this blog and also for all the moms in hope I can make a difference.

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