What Men Talk About?

The idea of ​​this meeting has been in the air for a long time. Today, many people say that modern men experience difficulties and even disappointments in relationships with women.

Women have become freer, more self-confident and independent. In a sense, they no longer need men. That is, the desire for love, of course, has not been canceled, but the need to enter into a relationship for reasons of status or finance has disappeared.

But it is one thing to build theoretical conjectures about this. And it’s quite another thing to learn the truth firsthand. Do men believe in love and the need for relationships? Has it become more difficult for them to get to know each other or maintain existing connections? Is there a desire to come up with new models of life together?

We invited five men aged 24 to 52 to discuss these very personal issues with them. Oddly enough, it didn’t take long to persuade them. Such topics are rarely discussed in male companies, but the need to speak out and listen to others is obviously great.

And our guests seemed to be really interested in each other in a cozy cafe not far from the editorial office of Psychologies magazine. Yes, and drinks helped frank conversation – what would a man’s conversation be without them?

Pavel starts: “I am 46 years old, I am a journalist. My wife and I lived together for ten years. We broke up last year. Now I am not officially married, although … In general, everything is complicated.

Next, 24-year-old student Stas takes the floor: “I am graduating from university. And the relationship, it so happened, has already ended. They lasted two years and everything was great. But then my friend went abroad for an internship – and cheated on me. I found out about everything and broke up with her.”

Yes, with relationships, the picture is not idyllic yet: two men and already two partings. The turn of 45-year-old designer Andrey. He lives with his girlfriend for 8 years, they are raising two children. But they are not married.

“You can say that I’m even proud of it,” Andrey grins. – In my family, it has always been believed that getting married is a mandatory program. And it was important for me to prove to everyone, and to myself, that there are other options. My friend and I give each other freedom. From the very beginning, I called the absence of monogamy the main condition of our union.

At this moment, the men at the table begin to look at Andrey more closely. Some smile knowingly, others raise their eyebrows in bewilderment. “All my previous relationships ended after my trips to the side.

And you can think whatever you want about me, but I believe that I have a right to it, and I do not want to give it up. But, on the other hand, I want my children to have a mom and dad and that we all be together.”

Photographer Mark, 32, sitting next to Andrei, says that he lived with a very jealous and selfish woman for six years. Last fall, both of them came to the conclusion that this could not continue. And just a couple of weeks after the breakup, Mark met another – with whom he is completely happy.

However, Mark does not seem to make high demands on relationships. “I don’t expect anything special from them,” he says. – In fact, I prefer not to think about this topic at all and not to ask global questions.

We feel good in bed, we have something to talk about, we live for today, without thinking ahead. Well, maybe she is guessing, but she hides it well from me, knowing my previous unsuccessful experience. Also, by the way, evidence in her favor.

The turn comes to the fifth interlocutor, 52-year-old economist Philip. “I have been living with the woman I married last year for 16 years. This is my second marriage. The first one was still in the institute youth and did not even last until the diploma.

Then there was a lot of things, I have three children from two different women. But he only recently remarried. Why? Because I love. And this is important to me: to consolidate our love, to confirm it, and in this way too.

The interlocutors at the table are clearly intrigued. But if their lively reaction to Andrey’s words about free relationships is understandable, then such an interest in Philip’s “old-fashioned” confession looks unexpected: “And after these 16 years, do you still love her?”, “Are your feelings the same as on the first day, or Is it already a habit?

Philip shrugs: “I listened to you talking about contracts, about romances that begin and end when they contradict other desires. But I didn’t hear you talk about obligations or feelings.

And that’s where it all started for us. Our love has only deepened over the years. It probably helped that we met already well over thirty, both are not children, both had enough experience. And, more importantly, it was only with my current wife that I learned to really talk. Not right away, by the way. But communication is the main thing.

The fact that we can talk about our feelings and hear each other helps us overcome all problems and become only closer.”

There is silence around the table. It seems that Philip’s words plunge the other interlocutors into thinking about why they failed to save their relationship. Moreover, men at the table cannot recall any acute crises and fundamental disagreements. The story of Stas, who was cheated on by a friend, is an exception.

“It’s just that over time, some kind of indifference came,” says Pavel. “We didn’t look at each other anymore, we merged with the landscape.” “When we tell ourselves that we need to change something in order to revive the old spark, it actually means that it’s already too late and nothing will be able to revive,” says Mark.

Perhaps our guests did not have enough perseverance or simply the belief that feelings can last for a long time, that the state of being in love can be transformed into, perhaps less exciting, but more valuable and deep relationships?

Andrew doesn’t believe it. “Me and romance are incompatible,” he says. – I have it like in an old joke: “Love was invented by Russians so as not to pay for sex.” But seriously, this is probably such a trick of nature so that humanity continues to multiply. And when you have given the debt to evolution, love passes.

In a relationship, I like the very beginning. When it’s the first time. But there is a “shelf life” after which we get tired of a partner. The whole point is to keep the first meetings fresh. And for this it would be necessary not to live together, not to go to bed every night.

“Do you think that a woman does not get tired of your trips to the left?” Stas is interested. “But I have nothing against her campaigns,” Andrey is surprised. – Although I think that with two children, she does not have so many opportunities for this. But I give her freedom. Believe me, few are capable of it!

Andrey says this clearly not without pride, but judging by the expression on the faces at the table, other men see no reason to be proud here.

Although Mark and Stas are younger than the rest, they do not believe that the idea of ​​a couple has become obsolete and requires a radical revision. Loyalty, life under one roof, children – their description of the ideal sounds vague, but quite traditional.

At the same time, Mark’s parents have been happily married for more than 30 years, and he says that he himself and many of his friends envy them in a good way.

Stas’s parents broke up a long time ago, but, according to him, relationships for his generation are again becoming a great value: “Life today is unstable. You don’t know what and where will happen tomorrow. And family, relationships – maybe the only source of stability for us. But then why is he still alone?

“The high expectations of girls scare me a little. They want to be successful, cool. Well, please, but then we can be different. With their own interests, and not necessarily ready to put their whole life at their feet.

And then, if equality, so then in everything. And it doesn’t work like that: anyway, every time you have to kind of conquer them, and they sit with popcorn and see what you can do. ”

This monologue is fully understood by older men as well. “Young girls are torn between two stereotypes: between a handsome prince and online dating,” Pavel says. “It’s the same with our peers: they rush between fairy tales and porn.”

As a result, the conversation turns to fears. “What I fear,” Mark admits, “is their biological clock. I am afraid of their desire to give birth to a child at any cost, I am afraid to become a donor – with complete indifference to me and to relationships. “But their desire to control scares me,” Pavel adds. “I can’t and don’t want to be around all the time, do everything together.”

Perhaps we would have learned something else about men’s fears, but the waiter reports that the cafe is closing. Our guests stop at the entrance to smoke goodbye (although only two of them smoke).

“But your wife doesn’t mind if you go out for a drink with a friend. Well, or there with a former classmate, for example? Andrey asks Philip. “I don’t really have any friends,” he replies. And my wife, too, by the way. We live in isolation.”

“Well, maybe that’s why this story with communication and traditions works for you.” The other four seem to think that such an existence “under the hood” is not suitable for them. Philip, in turn, asks Andrei: “What will you tell your children about the family?”

“What I want is for them to find someone they can be happy with. But they were under no illusions. I don’t know if my relationship can be an example for someone. Hardly, of course. Although in fact, we are doing very well.”

Mark sighs, clearly unsatisfied. “I don’t think we understood anything,” he sums up. – There is you with your expectations, and there is another person. It’s impossible to change it. Fully adapt to it – thanks, no need. Apparently, this is the wheel that needs to be reinvented every time.”

Jean-Michel Hirt, psychoanalyst

I am afraid that men are not fully aware of the path that women have already traveled, the scale of the changes that have happened to them. Men prefer to complain about difficulties in the face of a relationship model that is already breathing its last, instead of trying to seriously think about themselves, to question themselves.

I don’t think most men would have the strength to “take the helm” to change their relationship. Rather, they perceive the couple as a necessary evil, which nevertheless brings certain benefits: comfort, the opportunity not to be alone and to have children.

But not as a chance to enrich your life by dealing with another person, with a partner who is different from his own traits. It is very rare to hear a man reflect on his partner and the development of their relationship.

In my practice, almost no one perceived the feminine as a continent to be explored. They talk about those whom we enjoy, about those whom we tolerate, but not about those who, by their otherness, will allow men to stop considering their own phallus as the center of the world.

Men are well aware that now, thanks to the advances of science, women no longer need them to give birth to a child, and that the autonomy of their sexual desire is a conquest that cannot be taken from them. Therefore, they are afraid of women, leave them or multiply connections in order to convince themselves of their masculinity.

Their narcissism quickly becomes a defense: since the relationship is inevitable, one must arrange it in the best possible way to satisfy what they consider to be their (phallic) interests.

But you can’t get everything at once: for now, they are still too busy making our planet rotate (and not always in the right direction).

To reinvent marriage, you need to devote a little free time to this activity and a lot of interest and openness to another person who is different from yourself. Or two, but keeping in mind their difference. Not to myself and to another like me.