The Secret Skills Gap Between Men and Women: Chris Largent at TEDxWilmington 2013

[Applause] thank you for being here everybody I'd like to ask you a question have you ever noticed that in the average American family when the wife of the kids get sick the husband gets angry yeah okay so you can notice that doesn't make any sense does it I mean there's something illogical about it it's not as if the wife and the kids get the other and conspire against dad to say let's contract diseases to take him off people actually don't get sick intentionally so what's going on here well I suspect that behind dad's anger is the key to the secret relationship skills gap between men and women now I use this ironically because everybody knows there's a relationship skills gap between men and women it isn't actually a secret right they wrote plays about it in the classical world and for the last I don't know 30 or 40 years there have been television films and TV shows movie films all sorts of things well tragedies and comedies not I think I was going to say comedies but tragedies and comedies about this gap so I'd like to look at it and the way we can do that is let's back angry dad up to when he was a teenager now the United States is a complex society but it is at very least as sociologists are fond of reminding us a patriarchy and so when dead is a teenager what happens is he starts getting messages that are conscious and some unconscious that he's supposed to be in charge the basis of a patriarchy is control and guys are supposed to be in control I'll pass over how that actually works and go right to the problem that the teenage kid is going to have he has to be in charge of everything and then there's one other problem he's got he's got to be perfect you've heard the famous TED talk by Ken Robinson from 2006 and one of the points that Sir Ken makes there is that we stigmatize mistakes that is we're not allowed to make mistakes in the society so this kid is being told that he has to be in charge on one hand and it has to be flawless on the other you have some idea if he's growing up with that message and men and patriarchy's do why men have performance anxiety and why he gets angry when the wife and kids get sick because he's expected to make sure that everything goes perfectly that there are no problems and that's a problem now all I want us to do for the relationship piece is imagine the amount of energy and time and focus that goes into trying to be in charge and be perfect I mean the skills for being in charge and controlling are very very very high but the skills for most anything else are very low and men and patriarchy's usually have a very basic relationship skill level it's about here women on the other hand who in patriarchy's develop their own sense of responsibility and commitment nonetheless they have lots of time to develop relationship skills and the skills get very sophisticated the level is way up here but I'd like to tell you what those skills are but I'm a man in a patriarchy I haven't a clue but I can see the gap I know when I'm outclassed now these to the guy with this level and the woman with this level are going to get into relationship with each other how's this going to work well the first thing that happens is both of them forget the relationship skills gap it's romantic but it's a little bit of a problem because let's start with him he sees her and he's drawn to her and so after the preliminaries he decides he's going to try his basic relationship skill now we know what that is with men there's one relationship skill they've been allowed to have physical intimacy sex so after the preliminaries he tries it and if it works he tries it again and it works he tries it again and after three or four that she says well I knew I was a guy I could do this I can do this relationship thing I'm in charge I'm in control and I'm making this work in the meantime she's thinking if it works out fine for her well when he's going to start doing the other stuff she's forgotten the skills gap see she thinks that the physical intimacy the sex is his default relationship skill it isn't it's his only skill that's it she's seen it there isn't anymore right and what happens of course is both of them start drawing false conclusions on his part now let's start with her it's more fun on her part she starts thinking okay when is he going to get around to the rest of it what's wrong with him maybe he's not into me enough there are books about that maybe he's not committed and so on and we if we pass over the psychological trauma and leave that to the side she's looking for something that he's not doing here and a reason that he's not doing and she might start to draw funny conclusions some of the conclusions have to do with and usually my favorite men only want one thing one thing is when people get frustrated in relationships as they move from being in a relationship with one person to the entire species right so you go from he's not doing it to men only want one thing he doesn't want only one thing he can only do one thing on his side what's going on is that he's going to draw the same odd conclusions he's going to think I don't know what she wants now actually that's true he doesn't know what she wants because he doesn't have the skills it's as if he walked onto a basketball court never having played basketball someone passes in the ball he catches it and they say let's play ball he only knows how to do one thing pass the ball back and then it's hopeless when people expect more of them he doesn't know what it is he doesn't have the skills and so he starts drawing other conclusions - well she's just demanding or she's trying to trap me or one of my favorites women are mysterious you notice he went from the individual to the whole species women are mysterious you can't understand them there's no pleasing them that sort of thing so these really goofy things in terms of the conclusions start happening because the skills gap isn't closing and I'm going to show you I've seen therapists forget this in couples groups so it's a fairly important thing now here's the problem getting over the gap isn't terribly romantic because the men for their part are going to have to realize they don't have the sky Bill's now men hate to not have the skills because they're supposed to be in charge and they're supposed to be perfect they're supposed to know how to do all of this stuff the fact that they can't annoys them but they will also draw a wrong conclusions about the fact that they're annoyed they will think I don't know what's wrong with me or maybe it's a character flaw or maybe I was traumatized probably happened I was a child if they don't do that they will try to blame the woman I wasn't going to use this but there's a thing in comparative mythology that has to do with the second creation story in Genesis the Adam and Eve one you probably know that one and there's a moment in the Adam and Eve story where Eve is eaten from the fruit God has figured out that something is wrong he goes to the garden and he says dad okay what have you done and Adam says the woman you gave me tempted me and I did eat now men have been trying to develop that level of blaming skill ever since because Adam blames God and his wife in the same phrase the woman you gave me he doesn't need a whole clause to do it boom that's it the blames were there and that's the other thing that the man will do he'll try to find some way to blame her or blame God right now all he really has to do what's expression man up which I metaphor I'm not going to pursue at this point and really say okay I don't know how to do this again it's not romantic it's not the some kind of thing that's terribly appealing I'm not going to just be dying to go out and say to the woman that I'm trying to be romantic within macho and so on and say I don't know what the heck you're doing here can we have a mentoring session and that's where the woman comes in because the woman has to be the mentor in this case she's the one who's got the skills now I mentioned this to someone a female friend of mine I'm a male in a patriarchy I keep female friends just to show that I have them in I'm with it politically correct I was talking to a female friend and I mentioned that she said I now know now I don't want to be his mother it's not being his mother he had a mother that's how you got him he needs a mentor he needs someone who willing to say okay I know you don't have these skills we all know this there are jokes on television about it so here's what you need to know and what will happen is she will be giving him general skills as well as specific ones about her own needs which will then start to relate to his so that the skills gap hopefully will start to close now that's about the best I can do in terms of a solution because the beauty of being a classically trained philosopher which I am is that our only job is really to point out the bleeding obvious and try to get off the stage before anybody noses that's all we've done this is the bleeding obvious to change it people are going to have to work pretty hard but there can be lots of good payoffs about this where are we 2013 about 15 years ago the sex addiction expert Patrick Carnes came into this area was giving a series of talks and he said if we can get male-female relationships right we can help to save the world and by the way is a quick aside I'm not talking about same-sex relationships simply because as my youngest brother who died of AIDS always said to me don't talk beeps gay don't talk about something you don't know anything about but if anything here helps same-sex relationships great but Pat Collins was focusing on male-female relationships and he said we can help to save the world if these two configure out how to get together because the skills involved would be very sophisticated for transforming the society so I'd like to leave you with an image in the 1700s in Sweden there's a very very famous scientist Emanuel Swedenborg so famous in fact that like Einstein in the twentieth century here if he moved from one town to another he made headline news in midlife he started having all kinds of spiritual experiences and spiritual visions especially of the other world and he would go and repeat it sorry reported in by the way in multiple volumes good scientist one of the experiences that he had was he was watching and this great light being was coming toward him and he thought well that must be an angel but as he watched what happened was - there were two people they turned slightly away from each other and he noticed this isn't just one Angell so he asked about this phenomenon and he was told these are two people who are profoundly in love and when they turned toward each other they create an angel so what I'm hoping is that we will work hard overcome the relationship skills gap save the world a bit by creating lots of angels thank you for listening [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 70,794

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Id: iJ8Np5EST3A

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2013