Chapter 2. Good Will Toward Men: Judith Sherven

therapist; women’s unrealistic expectations of men

Judith is one of the twenty-two women intereviewed in the 1994 book Good Will Toward Men

Judith Sherven, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist whose specialty is working with couples and individuals, both men and women, who find it difficult to sustain intimate relationships. She works with her husband, James Sniechowski, in gender reconciliation — helping men understand women and women understand men. Judith lives in Los Angeles. She was born in 1943.

(This info is from 1994, when the book was published.)

Jack: Your work with women includes asking them to make some changes other than the ones they’ve been demanding. What kinds of changes do you have in mind?

Judith: The women’s liberation era was largely a political and external movement. It had to be. But there was very little looking inside and saying, “How is it that I am so willing to be submissive? Why am I so willing to blame men for my condition? What am I doing that gets in my way of breaking the Glass Ceiling in the corporate world? Why do I refuse promotions that are offered to me? What’s getting in my way that I can’t be more successful? How come in the presence of men, I somehow turn into this little coy, clinging girl when just a few hours ago at work I was a very strong, opinionated woman?”

There are a lot of internal barriers that women hold about how they think they need to be that are far more dangerous, far more limiting than the external issues. Granted, the two areas can’t be totally separated, but the external issues are not going to change very readily until the internal ideas have changed.

Women have been hypnotized into thinking “it’s a romantic world” and all they have to do is be pretty, sweet, nice, and cunning, and a man will save them. He’ll know exactly what she wants and needs. Too many women think they don’t have to get an education, they don’t need a career, they don’t need financial support of their own. And in fact they’re often talked out of that by their parents, mostly by their mothers, because a man will “save them.”

These ideas are still at work? It’s 1993!

Absolutely. They’re practically as present in high school girls today as they ever were. Shockingly so. The National Organization for Women criticizes the patriarchy for not granting women equal rights, equal voice and equal stature. But NOW and the radical feminists have not yet made it politically correct to analyze how mothers raise their daughters.

What needs to be examined about the way women think of themselves and the way women have been brought up?

I start with asking women how they value themselves. Largely, women are taught that their value is in getting a man, having a man pay for her, and that she has very little personal value. And she may even have a career! Women are often split. A woman may own her own business, but when it comes to a man, she’s not going to share payment for dating, she won’t go out with a man who doesn’t make more money than she does. I can’t tell you how many women in 1993 are still saying, “I want to look up to a man. I don’t want to be on an equal footing with a man. It’s not romantic, it’s not sexy.”

I have women clients who struggle, who in principle think that it’s wise to share economically in dating, for instance, because then they won’t feel obligated to put out sexually, but they’re so embarrassed about making that transition that they frequently can’t do it. They would rather be mute, be uncomfortable, have the man go ahead and pay — but at least feel they’re being ladylike. They’re also afraid of making the man uncomfortable, heaven forbid.

I don’t know. It certainly made men uncomfortable to see women entering executive suites and police forces, but that didn’t stop women from doing it. I have to wonder whether “I would do it except it would hurt the man” is a pretext for avoiding something they don’t really want to do.

It has to do with her image of herself. If she thinks, “I have to appear feminine, I have to appear ladylike and demure,” she’s going to have a lot of trouble saying, “Thanks for dinner, and next time I’m buying.” Or, “I’d like to split the check with you.” But if she has already done sufficient inner work, if she thinks, “I don’t want the fantasy that I’m a princess and he’s a prince; I want to start my relationships on the same footing that I want with a partner — equal,” then she’ll act like an equal.

I can’t tell you the number of single women I’ve had in my practice who claimed they wanted to get married, but wouldn’t date anybody unless they had an income of so much, or a portfolio worth so much. Their fantasy is “When I find the right man, he will give me the right life-style. I’ll have the right kind of house, I’ll live in the right kind of neighborhood, I’ll have so and so number of kids, they’ll go to this private school.” It’s a romantic fantasy that women are still living in. And I’m a recovering romantic. I speak from whence I come. I didn’t get married until I was forty-four, because I had to get over this stuff.

Did you get close to getting married along the way?

I was engaged, or engaged to be engaged, a couple of times, but I could see a divorce down the road, and I had no interest in that. It took a lot of work on myself to get ready to be with just a guy, and have just a life.

I can imagine it could be pretty depressing for a romantically minded but not terribly gorgeous woman to look in the mirror and think that the best prospect she’s got for her economic happiness is some man who’s going to be willing to settle for her mediocre looks. Any possibility that this disappointment can manifest itself in anger or rage at men?

Sure. Absolutely. But it can happen to attractive women, too. I can speak better from my own life. I worked as a model and actress most of my teens and twenties, so I am attractive, and always had men to date. Nevertheless, because I was raised with this same “find a man to take care of you” ethic, I found myself in my twenties hating men, being a version of today’s male-bashers, blindly believing that it was men’s fault that I felt so powerless. And I eventually went into therapy because I wasn’t getting married and I couldn’t understand why. I discovered that there’s a part of me that has a lot of integrity and wisdom, and that I couldn’t possibly get married to a man and give all my power away. So I avoided getting married, blessedly. But I then had to do the work of finding my own power, so that I wouldn’t have to hate men anymore, and I wouldn’t have to believe that they have all the power.

When you were hating men, what were you thinking?

That they were assholes, that they were all monsters in one form or another. They were either passive slugs, who were worthless, or they were macho jerks, who were useless.

And they all wanted to get in your pants.

They either wanted to get in my pants, or they didn’t want to get in my pants, and that was boring.

While you were hating men, and thinking contemptuous thoughts of men, were you also dating them?

Oh, yes, of course! And I was in great competition with them in raging arguments about politics or — it didn’t matter what the topic was, the issue was to try to beat them, to try to show them that I actually did have power. It was all unconscious, but I spent a lot of time arguing and shouting and trying to prove that I was smart and they weren’t so smart.

As you look back now, do you see anything different about them and power?

I see that what looked so powerful then was my lack of internal comfort, so that when I looked at them, they looked comfortable. I still know some of these men; I now know that they were struggling with their own issues. But I couldn’t see that because that wasn’t what I was looking for. I was looking for them to be the Rock of Gibraltar. I was expecting them to be the potential prince who might come along and rescue me. I didn’t want to see any faults or flaws. It would have wrecked my fantasy about them being the prince.

There’s a lot of press about male violence against women, but one of the things we don’t look at is a sort of soul violence that women carry toward men when they imagine they’ve married a prince. As the actual man shows up, the rage that women feel over the disappointment of not getting a prince can be vicious. I’m speaking for I can’t tell you how many couples I’ve seen in my office. The women do not feel that they’re being violent or vicious or destructive when they lambaste their men for not being their fantasy ideal. They believe, in some unconscious manner, that they really are entitled to the prince, and it’s okay to abuse this guy because he’s not perfect.

And does the guy being abused see himself being unjustly abused or does he see himself being justly criticized for being a failure?

It depends again on the level of consciousness of the man. I’ve seen both, many, many times.

If a man believes himself to be a failure, can that paralyze him so that he doesn’t defend his integrity?

That’s what I’ve seen. Many men become mute, because some part of them thinks they’re supposed to be the prince also, and that they should be able to make a woman happy.

I think I can convince men that this romantic ideal is a pretty rough deal for them. If all you’re good for is your money, you’ve got to work a lifetime for it, and there’s never enough. If I were a woman, what would you say to convince me that I’ve also got a lot of reasons to abandon this situation? What’s to keep me from thinking, “Why should I change? This is great for me. All I’ve got to do is look good and I get this guy to go out and kill himself to make money that I get to enjoy?”

Women I’ve had in my office, who have no hope of having real love in their lives, would agree. “I am staying with this program completely. It works for me. I don’t expect to be loved. I don’t think men can love anyway. So I might as well have the money.” But if I can appeal to women beyond that cynicism and injury, I can get them to see that money can never provide the kind of emotional sustenance that they’re hoping to get as well.

What typically has happened along the way for a woman to get to the point where she thinks, “I don’t think men can love anyway”?

Chances are she was raised by a mother who had a rotten marriage herself, who did not know how to take care of herself within her marriage, did not speak up for herself in the marriage, and so the mother has passed down to the daughter a cynicism and bitterness about men, and very often has passed down the message that “it’s just as easy to love a rich man.”

Let’s imagine that you have a new female client. Make her Everywoman. She comes to you with a typical complaint about her life, and she has the typical complaints about men. What would that typical presentation be?

She’s been going with a man for six months, she’s been married twice before, she has an interest in eventually marrying again, but she’s concerned that he doesn’t want to be committed. “You know how men are, they don’t ever want to commit.”

One second. I want to say to this woman, “You’re divorced twice! What are you saying about commitment?” Does she recognize the anomaly here?

Chances are, if she’s Everywoman, she’ll say, “But you don’t understand. I was devoted, I was a wonderful wife, I was there, I made dinner, you can see I’m an attractive woman, I gave him everything that I could. But the first one was a drunk, and the second one ran off with a floozy. I don’t seem to be able to find a decent man. They don’t want to be committed.”

So I would begin with, “Let’s look at how you seem to give yourself away. What you’ve just told me is that you have done everything to keep the men, but you didn’t keep them. They left you. They weren’t interested.”

So when she says, “He wasn’t there for me,” does the question become, “Well, where was ‘there’ and where were you?”

Exactly. How would he know that you needed anything? How would he ever have the information that you were unhappy with how things were going? “Well, I don’t want to be a nag.” Or, “I don’t want him to feel henpecked.” Or, “My mother said that men don’t like women who complain all the time.”

What’s the difference between henpecking and stating your needs?

I think the best way to distinguish it is that henpecking occurs when a woman asks but believes that she’s still not going to get what she wants.

He’s guilty before she gives him a chance.

Exactly. And she doesn’t ask for it in a forthright, direct, bold, serious manner. She asks for it from a victimized, whiny, nyeh-nyeh-nyeh tone of voice that does not inspire him to do it.

There were women’s consciousness groups, particularly about how not to be oppressed in marriage, but again, women still haven’t done the internal work. I’ve seen it in my own marriage, after all the work I’ve done on myself, after spending my life on these issues. Particularly when I was first married, I would find myself talking baby talk to ask for something. And Jim hated it. He’d say, “Why are you talking baby talk? Tell me straight; what is it you want?” Or I’d find myself sort of couching my question around a corner, and subtly getting it in there, “Well, would you maybe, could you possibly…?” and he’d say “What? That’s so annoying! What do you want? Just tell me!” I feel like I speak for a lot of women on this. And it took some real consciousness and some real awareness to just ask a man as I would ask another woman.

I can understand the factor of a woman feeling powerless so that she has to shuck and jive to get the man to do what she wants him to do. But on the other hand, I can see that part of what justifies or what motivates her to be indirect is that she doesn’t want to honor, respect and solicit his input to the situation. She knows what’s right, and any way she can get it done is justifiable.

It’s curious, isn’t it, that as powerless as women have been trained to be, in the area of domestic relations there’s also a kind of entitlement and righteousness that women have passed down. If the woman has the unilateral attitude that it’s “my way or the highway,” and we start seeing men take the highway, we have to take a look and say, “This cannot be all men’s fault.” And for a lot of these men there may be wisdom in taking the highway.

In the woman’s mind, what justifies her righteousness?

The first thing that comes to mind is that a lot of women think that men are boys, that men are really not grown up, they are not responsible, they’re not organized, that they expect to be taken care of. We women, on the other hand, know how to take care of things. We’re on the ball, we’ve got things taken care of; you’re off playing softball with the boys.

And, of course, if you’re female, you know all about intimacy; you’re really skilled with intimacy. There’s a lot of prejudice and mythology that has to be taken apart here, because I don’t see that women are any more emotionally available than men. Truly. They may be able to cry more easily, just like men can get angry and rage more easily. But when it comes down to actually telling their truth, their emotional truth, to a man they care about, I don’t see that women can do it any better than men can do it with women. And I’m saying that after seventeen years of doing counseling and psychotherapy and who-knows-how-many seminars and conferences.

Why are men not saying, “Knock it off!” when women assume undue control of the relationship?

I think we have to look at what’s considered manly. Within the confines of masculinity as it’s been structured, up until recently, it has not been manly to object to how a woman treats a man. Men are supposed to be able to tolerate anything; they are tough, they can take anything.

Especially from this insignificant little creature called a woman. This little ball of fluff.

Precisely. So to object would require him to say, “I don’t like how this is. I’m not so tough, and not so strong; I’m getting hurt.”

Or “I am strong. I am tough. But guess what? You’re strong, and you’re tough, too.”

That would be wonderful. That’s what it needs to be. The word that works for me, for both genders, is for us to be able to be fierce, together, so that I don’t have to worry that if I hurt your feelings by objecting to something, you’re going to fall over dead or fly into a rage. And I don’t want you to worry when you get fierce and object to something about me, that I’m going to collapse in a puddle of tears, or faint, or go flying out the door to mother’s house. Both genders need to have enough internal substance that we can really take each other on when we need to.

Men have trouble putting their finger on women’s strength and power. It’s like Miss Piggy the Muppet saying “Moi?” There’s no vocabulary for talking about women’s power. It’s easy to deny. We need a vocabulary for tagging, discussing and calling women’s power into account.

The notion of giving something a name is the vastest generative idea that was ever conceived. — Susanne K. Langer, as quoted by Gloria Steinem in Revolution from Within.

What comes to mind are two points. One is that we need some language about the power of the powerless, or the power of victimization. We don’t have acceptable language for that because in today’s political climate you can’t blame the victim. Number two, we need to be able to discuss the kind of power that women have in the example we were using earlier, when they assume they’re not going to get what they are asking for, so they make the man bad or wrong at the outset. That’s power, the power of shame, perhaps. The other matter here is how to help women become conscious that they’re doing it. It would be best if the man could spot a particular behavior and point it out immediately. “Look, right at this minute, this is power. You just announced what was appropriate to wear to church.”

He’s going to have to stop pretending that these “little things” that really bother him don’t really bother him.

Precisely.

So if he feels bothered, he should trust his feelings, and say, “Excuse me, I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but we have something to talk about.”

Right. And remind the woman, “You’ve been asking me to speak my feelings. I want you to take me seriously. I am now telling you a feeling.”

I wonder if part of the reason that men don’t communicate emotional things to women is because women don’t really want to be faced with the ugly emotional realities of men’s lives.

I think that’s really well put. Again, it’s this issue of romance. The prince mythology can only stay in place if she blocks out the information about the quality of men’s lives. She has to believe that he has a princely life.

I’m using my own life as the best example I know, but it took me a lot of work, internal work, to make myself ready to love and want to live with just a guy — just a guy who has as many life issues as I have, who’s not going to save me, not going to redeem me, not going to make my life for me.

It’s hard, but it’s worth it.

I publish frequently. To never miss a story, ask Medium to notify you by email when there’s something new.

I am serializing my 1994 book Good Will Toward Men for free. It’s a collection of interviews with twenty-two women about making gender equality a two-way street. Check out the chapter list.