What would happen if you stopped caring so much about what guys thought of you? How would your life change? What if you lived every day with the conscious understanding that men have feelings and insecurities just as deep and hidden as yours? They are not always strong, and they have broken hearts sometimes too. Maybe a perspective shift can help women to stop placing their counterparts on a pedestal.
Men are not omniscient, perfect, evil (well, not most of them), or completely selfish. As teenagers, young adults, and everything that comes before or after, it is easy for women to try to envision themselves through a guy’s eyes. “Does he think I’m beautiful?” “What would he think if he were here right now?” “Am I good enough to be with someone like that?” All of these questions are valid and rooted in every woman’s desire to be loved and protected…but is the obsession crippling us?
Every woman has been hurt before, and plenty of cases involve guys’ actions or cutting words. But, women cut back, and all of us hide our wounds in different ways. In her book, “So Long, Insecurity,” Beth Moore used anonymous polls to discover what men are most insecure about, and how they usually disguise those insecurities. Overwhelmingly, they fear failure in relationships, being physically unattractive, and failure to perform (in most areas of life). Sound familiar? One man wrote, “I worry that I’m not good enough to rise to the top of my field—and that I’ll someday be cast aside. So what then? I’m insecure…I sometimes feel insignificant—like I was born for something great but that I wasted it and I’ll never get there now. I wonder if God gave my resources to somebody else like the parable of the talents.”
That one really strikes a nerve with all the go-getters out there. If the Grand Canyon University (boy-to-girl) ratio says anything, it is that more women than ever are “go-getters.” So, we have similar—if not the same—insecurities, but how do guys overcompensate? Generally, women are advised to crawl back into their shells and stay quiet or hide behind more makeup. Of course, there are no rules, but most of us can identify with this. Guys admit that they usually get defensive and then pretend like they are not.
“When I feel insecure…I might be snippy or depressed. Sometimes I pretend like there’s no problem at all so she won’t see what I’m feeling and thinking.”
Another man said, “As a man, I feel like I ought to know how to do the things that present themselves to me. I usually respond to these feelings by either ignoring the issue altogether or acting as if I know what I’m doing.”
These are confessions from grown men. While we girls can appreciate their vulnerability and honesty, there is also a flip side. Why try to impress someone who is probably preoccupied with their own shortcomings too?
Most women do not bear the weight of having to hide their true emotions to appear stoic and “strong.” Imagine juggling everything that life throws at you while still wearing the tough-guy mask. Imagine growing up with the pressure to be big and strong, only to lose an arm-wrestling competition to a tiny, pretty girl (LopesBarstool, lookin’ at you). Imagine being a guy who is shorter or more scrawny than all the girls in his neighborhood. It is easy to get caught up in what a guy might be thinking about you, but he is working through his old wounds too.
We’ve all got our insecurities, whether we hide them or not.
References:
Moore, B. (2016). So long, insecurity: you’ve been a bad friend to us. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.