Happy Life with a Russian Wife

Posted By admin on March 16, 2010

Working a few years ago in an international program on domestic violence prevention, I came across an interesting training exercise that focused primarily on teenagers and students, and could be used with the grown-ups as well. It helped discuss common gender stereotypes and review one’s attitude towards them, and its major goal was to prevent  dating violence.

Once, I was asked to conduct a public awareness session on domestic violence with the students of one of the Khabarovsk universities. As far as it had been scheduled on the eve of St.Valentine’s day, I chose that  exercise to initiate the discussion of the dating violence issues among the students.

So I asked two volunteers from the group to take turns in reading the parts of the same story written from a man’s and a woman’s perspectives. The story was about the events that occurred on their first date and resulted in the dating violence incident. By the way, the man and the woman in the story had pretty different perceptions of the same things and events that had happened to them.

While listening to the story, the audience giggled nervously. I think it was a normal protective reaction to the uncomfortable feelings experienced by the students at that moment. Having listened to the both versions of the story, I asked the following questions to them:

• “In your opinion, was the woman in the story really raped?”
• “If yes, why did it happen?”
• “At what stage was it possible to prevent the dating violence?”

I remember it vividly that while discussing the behavior of the man and the woman described in the story, most of the participants said that the deplorable outcome of the date was the woman’s fault. “She is to blame” was a common gender stereotype. We had to explore it together by discussing of how it might have appeared and analyzing its roots with the students. In addition, I explained some of the specifics of the woman’s psychology. The lady  from the story had a very different “picture” of the date in her head in comparison to the man’s, hence her specific expectations from him, which unfortunately had not been articulated by her. Our heated debate continued during the break after the session. The theme turned out to be very challenging for the students in terms of staying open-minded and being able to accept each others’ points of view.

Why have I remembered this episode of my life? The thing is, my husband, who is a psychologist by profession, had incorporated that exercise into the seminars for his Psychology students, and conducted it for quite a while. Recently, he and I have had a discussion on it. My husband told me, “You know, I have revised my approach to that exercise.” I asked him why and he responded that it was not only the man who should have taken into account the woman’s expectations of the date, but also the woman, in her turn, should have taken into account his expectations. He came to the conclusion that this kind of a feminist approach was biased, because it presumed only the man’s guilt in what had happened. He also added that mutual understanding was simply impossible from this perspective. After all, the woman was equally responsible for what had happened to her, as well as the man.

“Recognizing the guilt of one partner does not take off the responsibility from the other,” he said.

Аfter regularly conducting this exercise during the Relationships Psychology course, my husband came to his own vision and understanding of how to discuss the dating violence issue with the students. He knew the key points he wanted to highlight and the conclusions he wanted to make. I had remained with my “old” understanding of the issue of the dating violence. So then we had to discuss those things together,  and find out how our beliefs had transformed with the time, in order to come to an understanding between us.

Now I wonder if men and women can learn to understand each other even when they have entirely different points of view on this or that matter… From my personal experience, I can say that thanks to such dialogues with my husband I have realized a very important thing: it is possible to take into account our partner’s right for another point of view, accept his/her difference from us and consider it, when we specifically commit ourselves to being a bit more open-minded than usual.  Here is what John Gray, the author of the bestseller “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” says in this regard, “When men and women are able to respect and accept their differences then love has a chance to blossom.”

Well, if you want to learn to accept the differences in the people you care for,  and build effective approaches to your life, you are welcome here, at our training on “How to Help Close People Be Happier With Us”

Categories: Empowering Each Other, Trainings
Tags: gender stereotypes, how to understand each other, who is responsible for relations, women empowerment trainings online