My men like to thwart my efforts, but claim the success.

I have been thinking a lot about the way a specific aspect of my relationships with men has been unfolding. It surprised me recently that the trend has been more or less consistent. So, I guess, it is time to share and ask for the community’s view of that.

As a very young little girl, and I was a bright one at that, I often got awards or prizes for outstanding performance. Despite that it was my mother who was always with me and encouraging me to give school my best and that life would be brilliant if I got not only good, but shining grades, when the time for prize-giving came, it was always my father who walked the stage to receive the prize at my side.

When I finished uni, it was my father who posed with me in the official graduation photo, smiling with all his joy, the joy that I rarely saw in him. My mother was at our back. Her face hardly shows in that photo. She is in many other graduation photos, but not the one official one.

My first household, I remember arriving at my new husband’s place to an empty flat. A bed, pots, plates, and that was it. So I wanted sofas. I wanted a dining table. I wanted cupboards. I started from the beginning pushing to furnish our flat. My husband said we had enough. We were just starting out. He insisted we would be moving soon and it would not be wise to fill this temporary place with furniture so as to move out again with it. I believed him. But three months down the line, it looked like we were staying longer. This time, I bought the sofas without raising the issue again.

When he came home that evening, his face lit up when he saw the sofas. And he enjoyed it a lot when he sat on these sofas. He was happy and said it was indeed much more comfortable to be sitting on the sofas. Immediately he called his friends. They had not come visiting the three months I had come to live with him. We had a ball of an evening. He bragged about the sofas, that he had bought them, that it was the best quality. I enjoyed his bragging and misappropriation of my efforts. After all, the two (who had married) had become one.

So I started thinking why he had refused to buy the stuff for three months if he enjoyed it so much when the stuff came. The joy I saw on his face was so pleasing. I asked if we could now buy the cupboards, thinking that since he had tasted the joy of a comfortable and good-looking home, he would readily agree. Surprisingly, he said no. I insisted. I pushed some more, stating why we needed them, how our kitchen was looking naked, how it was hard to wash and keep dishes clean, how disordered everything looked. Still, he refused. I set out to buy the cupboards. He came home, and rejoiced when he saw them. He invited the friends, and we all rejoiced, him telling everyone that he had bought the cupboards.

I did the same with the rest of the things we needed without telling him. He came home to one surprise after another until I felt satisfied that we now had all we needed.

This happened at every level. When I asked that we buy a car, the resistance from my husband was enormous. And a car was a big thing, a big deal for me. It had connotations. What if I have an accident? What if I die because of the car? But when I thought of how his face might light up when he saw the car, I went ahead and bought a car.

So he came and saw the car in the parking lot. He opened the door with the widest of smiles, and a beating heart, and a shaking voice. He congratulated me for buying the car, and settled into a life with a car. He asked for a drive the following morning, which I happily gave him. The next evening, the drive was with his friends, to whom he said WE had bought a car. I was still happy that I was making him happy.

The crunch came when I wanted to buy a house, a whole home for us. Here he totally and finally refused. I settled in, and thought, yes, let him be the one to buy us a home. And I waited.

Fast forward, today, after three other marriages with widely different men in widely different cultural backgrounds, in which the same trend happens, although with different aspects of life, I am wondering what it is in our men. The aspects might be a better job, a higher degree, a better car, a holiday, anything. The response is the same when I initiate it. Don’t do it, it is expensive, it is a bad idea, it will not work, it will not be recognized, it is too much work, it will not succeed. And when I have braved all of it and am about to reap success, the talk changes: “I did it, I told you so, I encouraged you, I gave you the idea, were is not for me…”

Most recently, for a higher degree that I wanted to embark on, I heard, “You do not need it, no one looks for it, no one recognizes it, no one cares. Once you have the confirming paper, that is the end of it!”

I went ahead and slogged through a difficult five years. On graduation, he was happy that I had made it. And he said, “With this, you can now apply for the kind of jobs you have always wanted.” Also with the higher degree, it was him boasting to his family… “My wife now has this qualification….”

Today, like my mother, I push my children to attain their very best. I get the wind from the front from him to take it easy and let children be children. I keep pushing, sometimes when he is not around. So that I do not get the discouragements. When the children achieve (and they do so with flying colours — my big one got the highest possible score in his new environment, new school) the man is happy, at the forefront. “I have done a lot, it is my efforts that bring them to this high achievement. You do not appreciate my efforts!”

Oooouff! I sigh. Is there any way to understand it all? My mother says, “They come from the same womb, these men.” Well, I laugh in agreement.

Have the men in my men-rich life been afraid of the process of obtaining success, yet wanting the success itself? I am asking myself if they have been jealous of my never-ending energy to do the things I love? Do they not know that it would be better if they encouraged me rather than thwart my ideas and efforts? But also, that their discouragements act as a very flammable fuel?

And with that, I have unearthed a hidden gender issue. The woman works, the man claims the glory. Looking back, I am wondering if it is in their genetic make-up, linked to the Y-chromosome. Of course, my research group of four men is nothing near significant as a sample population. But, again, am I the only one who attracts, or is attracted to, this kind of man?