What do we say to our kids when they’re bickering over nothing, but seemingly unable to stop? What do we say when they are stubborn, squawking, and convinced they are right, endlessly fuming at each other?
What do we say on the playground, in the classroom, around the kitchen table, in the back seat of the car? We tell them to “play nice.” We try to persuade them that it’s possible.
Generally, it is. And it helps if we are an example of the behavior we seek.
Compromise
What about the pouting, bratty, I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it little kid in all of us? In men and women? Can we learn to play nice?
As for men and women treating each other well – allowing for the many variations on relationships that may exist, I believe we can play nice. It is in our own best interest, and that of our families and communities.
Some of us are people pleasers. Some of us are narcissists. Most of us fit somewhere in between, on good days and bad days, doing the best we can with our co-workers, our partners, our children, our parents.
I believe that we can all learn the art of compromise, without losing ourselves. It isn’t easy.
I believe we can play nice. It’s easier than we realize.
For all our physical and psychological differences that define us, as well as the experiences and choices that take us the rest of the way – we want love, understanding, laughter, and affection. Men and women would like to get along. We seek a meaningful exchange. An authentic and lasting connection.
Musing on men and women
I’ve spent the better part of a week or more thinking about men I know and women I know, thinking about my sons and what sort of men they will become, raised by a single mother, wondering about men I’ve never met – those intrepid fellows over the years who have popped up politely on dating sites, engaged in conversation, then disappeared into the abyss of anonymity, seemingly without so much as a second thought.
Yes. Women do this, too.
Sometimes we get second chances at relationships. Sometimes, timing and circumstances work against us. But is it ever too late to reconsider our attitudes and actions? I don’t think so.
As I reach back into memory and look forward into the future, I insist on the value and necessity of playing nice. As adult men and women who meet, greet, date, mate, explore, create, and choose – or wander – whatever path suits us or finds us, honorably.
Marge Piercy
On that note, in requesting that we all consider the rewards of trying to get along, I will no doubt move on to other topics (as usual), eventually circling back to love, to romance, to the importance of chemistry, to what we want and need in our relationships. How could I not?
I would like to offer you a poem I read when very young. Even then, I sensed it held truth. I couldn’t understand the depth of that truth until I was older, had known what it is to love a man, and also, to love children.
While times have changed since this was written (it’s been more than 30 years), I believe many of you will nod in recognition. It may be the nature of women loving men, or it may simply be the nature of loving.
The Meaningful Exchange
© Marge Piercy / from The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing
The man talks
the woman listens.
The man is a teapot
with a dark green brew
of troubles.
He pours into the woman.
She carries his sorrows away
sloshing in her belly.
The man swings off lighter.
Sympathy quickens him.
He watches women pass.
He whistles.
The woman lumbers away.
Inside his troubles are
snaking up through her throat.
Her body curls delicately
about them, worrying, nudging
them into some new meaningful shape
squatting now at the center of her life.
How much lighter I feel,
the man says, ready
for business.
How heavy I feel, the woman
says: this must be love.
© Marge Piercy
Thanks for sharing that piece of poetry. It made me stop to think, this morning, about how we treat one another. We often do mistreat those closest to us…
Excellent post, as usual.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend, Lindsay. And thank you. Enjoy your playing nice.
This is not male/female but female commentary, so the poem picks up the strand of your earlier post on the nature of womanhood:
Stepping Westward
What is green in me
darkens, muscadine.
If woman is inconstant,
good, I am faithful to
ebb and flow, I fall
in season and now
is a time of ripening.
If her part
is to be true,
a north star,
good, I hold steady
in the black sky
and vanish by day,
yet burn there
in blue or above
quilts of cloud.
There is no savor
more sweet, more salt
than to be glad to be
what, woman,
and who, myself,
I am, a shadow
that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out
on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.
Denise Levertov
Thank you so much for this, NNR. Interesting how differently we can interpret those “burdens” that we carry when we love. Here, Their weight is noted, yet Levertov has transformed the burden into something exquisite, and more – sustenance: If I bear burdens they begin to be remembered as gifts, goods, a basket of bread that hurts my shoulders but closes me in fragrance. I can eat as I go.
And it goes to show that the woman carries the burdens. How true this rings.
Beautiful poem isn’t it? It certainly has felt true in much of my life. Perhaps more women do this than men, and yet I have encountered men who carry their share of the burdens. Sometimes, it’s impossible not to feel the weight of those we love. Perhaps men and women express it differently.
The situation described in Marge Piercy’s poem is all too often true, and unfair to women. Men confide inappropriately to women when they’re unable to confide in men. When I first became involved in men’s groups, I noticed that many men who attended did so at the urging of the women in their lives, who were exhausted from the burden.
My experience is that heaviness is part and parcel with loving someone. You carry their hopes and dreams, and in exchange they carry yours. Perhaps a shared burden?
I am learning how to be as nice to the people closest to me in life as I am to strangers. I have learned about myself that I push and push at those who love me. It’s unfair to them and to me. I definitely hope to soon be much better at simply being nice.
Kelly, you’re so right. Sometimes we do seem to be nicer, more polite, to those who aren’t as close to us, don’t you think? Perhaps we assume the others will put up with more because they love us. We ought to play nice with everyone – as much as we can. Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
I have found this with my kids too though – when they had troubles and would confide them, I would carry them with me, worrying about them. They would feel lighter and go along just fine. As someone once told me when I asked one question too many “It’s just the way it is!”