If you know me, I rarely have strong emotions or feelings towards someone or opinion. It takes a lot to make me dislike someone. But, I had a quite strong opinion towards some relationship coach today.
I have been watching some relationship coaching videos and been working on myself. I am a firm believer of retrospection and don’t do anything that you don’t want your partner to do. Work on yourself, because your own behavior is the only thing you can control.
However, I have come across a couple of one of those “relationship coach”‘s videos. By using the quotes, you can probably guess my opinion of this guy. Let me put it this way, he claims to be a relationship coach for men. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, and I am sure there are a lot of men frustrated with their love life, relationships and desperately need help and advice, just like there are tons of women needing the same thing. I have listened to a few coaches for women, and more or less agreed to their approach, work on yourself, don’t be needy, build your own life, work on being comfortable in your own skin and learn to love yourself and Mr. Right will come along naturally. However, the very first video I heard about this men’s coach, I was so shocked, and I felt my blood pressure rising. I held myself together, listened through the entire video. When I was asked what I thought about the video, I said I do not like this guy’s point of view, and I do not agree to him one bit.
To summarize his point of view, women are either mentally unstable or are gold diggers. Women date up, meaning we look for men that are more successful, have more money, more power, whatever women are after. But when things don’t work out, women takes whatever and men get screwed over. All men should think twice before dating, don’t invest in much of your time, your money, be careful throughout a relationship so they don’t get hurt.
OK, if you are a guy reading this, you may laugh, you may say this is true. If you are a woman like me, you probably feel as insulted as I did. First of all, I do not agree that women are mentally unstable or gold diggers. If so, guys, you would be way better off just don’t date at all. The rest of his point of view is very biased. At the end of the day, it’s quite equal between genders. There is no need to bash one gender because you are “coaching” the other gender. Also, I feel what he is doing is catering to a specific group of men, who may have had rough relationships before. Maybe they dated the wrong women, maybe there is something seriously wrong that they have been doing but refused to look at their own behavior or always have endless excuses why their behavior was justified. His approach was quite clear to me, have you been hurt in a previous relationship? This is why, because women are evil, and they are after your money. You need to look out for these signs, because even the sweetest woman will eventually show her true color, and at that time, you will be happy that you listened to me that you protected yourself and never invested in too much emotionally or financially.
This approach is so wrong in so many different levels.
First off, he is teaching men to be in an unfair relationship. If the girl he is dating isn’t investing herself in the relationship, fine, neither one is probably well protected, no one would be hurt if things go south. But, is there actually a relationship? Both parties keep one foot in, one foot out, no trust, constantly calculating, watching. That is not a relationship, that is torture. I can safely conclude that this sort of relationship will not work.
Secondly, say the girl is invested, went all in emotionally, maybe even financially into this relationship. The guy is keeping his distance, looking at her under X-ray goggles, examining what’s going on in her head, what is she after really. It’s just a matter of time for this relationship to end. Maybe he is not going to hurt, but she certainly will be, hurt deeply. This is not a balanced relationship. I don’t think even this man would want to trade places with her. This kind of relationship will fail, and not in a good way. So what’s the point of getting into one like this in the first place?
Thirdly, since whatever relationship this man is getting into is doomed anyway, what happens when it does end? This man goes back to this coach, yes you are right, all women are evil, things never work out, teach me more, teach me what else women are going to do to me. Chi-ching, more money to the coach.
At the end of the day, what upset me wasn’t just that he was bashing women unfairly, and biased, but also, he is setting people up for failure. People listen to this kind of coaching will never find a good woman and a meaningful relationship that will last for life. The coach isn’t teaching the individual how to be a man, how to be a better self and naturally attract the higher quality women. These people will not look at their own weaknesses and flaws and they will bound to repeat the same course of relationships, because they still attract the same women.
I love some other coaches’ videos, because they either teach either gender how to work on themselves, what are the common flaws of certain gender and how to overcome them. Or they teach both sides to be open, honest, brave and discuss emotions and feelings, put themselves in their partner’s shoes and really look at what they could be doing instead to avoid or solve conflicts.
A healthy relationship has to be a balanced and equal relationship. If only one person retrospect their behavior and improves themselves, it is just a matter of time for the two to fall apart. I really hope everyone to be able to say, from the bottom of their heart, if I traded place with my partner, I would want her / him to do the same thing to me.
