Gender Differences In Relationships

While many of us voice our strong desire to be involved in a love relationship, we often complain about them once we are deeply rooted in them. For some, we experience a series of difficult relationships. For others, we live in a marriage or life partnership that feels like hard work. Most relationships don’t work out between a man and a woman is because they cannot work out their differences. There is constant interpretation, explanations and apologies for assumptions and miscommunication. For example, say a guy’s girlfriend is not able to pay her bills, buy her own food or take care of herself in general. The guy takes it upon himself to take on her burdens as well as his causing more stress on him leading to being tired mentally. This causes …show more content…
However in order to make a relationship last, a couple would need to understand the causes of their relationship. Relationships are a constant struggle between contradictions, being happy, and satisfying the relationships in possible ways. The key to relationships, according to Baxter and Montgomery (1996), is to manage the tensions; we look for ways to satisfy both our needs and/or our desires. Learning about communication, culture and gender is important because it will allow for each person to fathom the importance of communicating with the opposite sex. According to (Wood, Julia) states that the first thing is that it enhances your appreciation of complex ways in which cultural values and practices influence your views of masculinity and femininity and men and women. In relationships men and women breakup because the difference between feminine and masculine approaches to problem-solving. For example a female wants to talk about a problem that happened to her at work. Her partner listens but approaches the situation in a direct manner telling her to get over the problem. This shows that men and women speech communities are different which would be discussed later on in this paper. The second enhancer is studying ones gender. According to (Wood, Julia) states that you will become more aware of ways cultural expectations of gender are communicated to you, …show more content…
Dialectical tensions occur within a relationship that causes us to disconnect and disengage with our partner. If the dialectical tensions are no longer sustainable within a relationship, the relationship is no longer plausible. Break-ups are then plausible. However if two people of the opposite sex don’t balance the tension between the two then they will eventually split. The tension normally stems from not accepting gender roles. According to (Trenholm and Jensen), when we follow traditional roles we transmit stable cultural values. The gender role dialectic focuses on the tension between accepting traditional gender definitions and finding new ways of being masculine or feminine (Trenholm and Jensen). Traditional gender roles are related to the traditional assumption that eventually most of us will pair up with someone of the opposite se and produce children, and the female will act as the children’s primary caregiver (Trenholm and Jensen). Therapist Betty Berzon describes this traditional arrangement in the following