What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You

Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, cause it’s OK to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, cause you think that being a girl is degrading.???from The Cement Garden.
Within the United States, the social expectations of what it means to be a womanor to be a manreside in two very distinct black and white boxes.Each box holds certain behaviors which are socially appropriate for men and women to adhere by.Obviously, these expectations have a profound influence on our sexuality and generate certain behaviors.I have questioned the stereotypical gender roles that we have been socialized into and continuously see a direct correlation with glorifying masculinity and degrading femininity within our society.What happens when these roles are embraced?Tony Porter recently gave a speech on Ted.com tilted A Call to Men, where he stated, See collectively, we as men are taught to have less value in women, to view them as property and the objects of men. We see that as an equation that equals violence against women.
The United States has the highest incidence of rape of all Western nations and the Centers for Disease Control reports that men’s violence against women is the number one health concern for women in the U.S. and abroad.Why? Anthropologist Dr. Sanday, compared the incidences of rape in 95 societies.Her research indicated that the frequency of rape was influenced most by the nature of the relations between the sexes, the status of women, and the attitudes that boys acquire during their developmental years.Her studies further demonstrated that rape-pronesocieties tolerate and glorify masculine violence, encourage boys to be aggressive, view physical force as natural and exemplary, demean the role of women in economic and political aspects of life, and avoid women’s work, such as raising children and household chores.
Does this sound familiar?Within the United States, we teach males that being aggressive and forceful is the winning formula for how to be a man.Inevitably, many men struggle against the paradigm of machoconditioning (strong, independent, virile, and dominant) and are socialized to be unemotional.The fear of being labeled a sissydrives the healthy expression of emotions deep within, left to fester.I feel that it is fair to say that strict adherence to these gender roles confines the way that we express our sexuality.As a society, we need to step up and challenge these gender roles and question what it really means to be a man.

What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You20733What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You There are plenty of so-called truisms out there, all designed to make usokay with things that aren’tokay. For example,Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. We all know that’s baloney. Words can hurt like hell.
And how about this one:What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” This truism has been readily debunked by the medical profession. Simply put, if you don’t know your tapioca pudding is laced with rat poison, having dessert will definitely hurtif not killyou.

It’s in the context of relationships where this truism is far too often heard and used as justification for bad behavior. If your sweetheart never knows you’re having an affair, no harm done, right? Wrong! Living with a big fat secret means there’s a big fat part of you that you can’t share with your partner. That big fat secret is the source of emotional distance from your partner and what will keep you from being 100% present in your relationship. In short, it’s what YOU knowand what you must forever keep from your sweetiethat hurts your relationship and, thus, your partner. Your sweetheart may never know about your infidelity and may never realize that he or she doesn’t have all of you, but don’t think for one minute that just becauseignorance is bliss that you haven’t taken away what should have been given to your partner.

Now, if you’ve already done the deed and mended your ways, thenlet sleeping dogs lie becauseconfession is good for the soul but sucks if you’re on the wrong end of that confession. Going forward, just remember that if you surrender to temptation, you will forever shut down a part of you that should be shared with your sweetheart.

I’m not suggesting that you can’t have your secrets or your privacy. It’s not critical that you share every little detail of your past or present life with your partner. A juvenile marijuana arrest may be so far in the past as to be currently irrelevant. Your current cocaine use is another story. That you once gambled away thousands of dollars in a drunken stupor may be an embarrassment you never share. Secretly spending every lunch hour at the track after a quick stop at the ATM is another story.

When you behave in ways that you hope your sweetheart never learns about, you put emotional distance between you and your partner. Worrying that your partner will discover the truth creates stress and anxiety that get in the way of your being a 100% present and loving partner. That hurts you. It hurts your relationship. It hurts your sweetheart.

Acting with integrity, living an open life, and behaving only in ways that are okay for your sweetheart to observe allows you to give yourself fully to your partner and to be fully present in your relationship. Emotional intimacy is the hallmark of a great relationship and what sustains a couple through the rough patches. Doing anything that causes distance or interferes with emotional intimacy hurts everyone involved. So, the next time you’re tempted to do something that ifkept secret won’t hurt, think again.

Shela Dean is a Relationship Coach, Speaker & Bestselling Author of Frequent Foreplay Miles, Your Ticket to Total Intimacy available through Amazon and her website.