- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Forgive me if I am misunderstanding you, but one point you appear to be making is that men have lesser power in relationships than in previous generations because women are no longer completely dependent economically.
Well this is indeed the case, but you then appear to leap from lesser power to no power at all, and this certainly flies counter to all current research.
Check out Dr John Gottman's work. As it happens, women are in fact much more inclined to accept influence from their significant others than are men, and the greatest predictor of divorce is the unwillingness of men to accept influence from the woman in their lives.
Greater economic independence does not correlate with the unwillingness of women to see the masculine pov. It does appear to correlate with the unwillingness of women to accept the masculine pov as the "standard" by which relationships are evaluated and maintained.
Women continue to view their relationships in terms of "us" and NOT "me."
You appear to be viewing intimate relationships as a zero sum game whereby compromise and cooperation translate into masculine powerlessness. Solid research contradicts this point of view.
