ANDREW G. MARSHALL
'Work isn't ruining relationships but supplying us with an alibi'
We are insecure about our jobs, the constant pressure to prove our worth is making us work longer and in the evening we’re too tired for anything more than to watch TV; the result is that our relationships have never had it so bad. We all know the story and can probably find examples from our own life, but divorce figures in the UK are at a new five-year low (down 8 per cent on last year).
So maybe it is time to question the received wisdom that things are worse now. With 20 years as a marital counsellor, I am in a good position to compare today’s problems with those of a generation ago. Certainly, I see first- hand the pressure of juggling two careers, when promotion no longer means relocation but one partner getting up at 5.30am for a longer commute to work. I have counselled city couples when one partner is still taking business calls in my waiting room. Even couples with regular jobs argue about allocating their free time, while 20 years ago it would have been about chores. Yet despite the arrival of the mobile phone, home computers and e-mail, I remain sceptical that modern life is truly to blame.
“Sorry, I was caught up at work” is such a familiar refrain that we don’t even question it. However, this is not a universal “Get out of jail free” card. On a trip to Mexico, I was fascinated to discover their take: “Sorry, my mother needed me.” In the UK, we would expect a story about her admission to hospital, but in Mexico this statement needs no justification. Perhaps we need to challenge our unquestioning acceptance of the work excuse. For many couples, the dirty secret is that one partner is happier at work than at home. He or she is finding projects to keep them in the office. This is not modern life ruining our relationships, more supplying an alibi or a temporary distraction.
So why do our guts tell us that life today is tougher? Certainly there are new pressures but they’re partly of our own making. We are obsessed with measuring ourselves against others. We no longer aim for the good life but to match the one paraded in celebrity magazines. Meanwhile, we want our children not just to succeed but to do better than their contemporaries.
So how can we insulate ourselves from these problems? Unlike everything else, time is finite and, therefore, precious. It is pointless to spend it looking over our shoulder. Instead we should focus on what is truly important: our relationships. In a disposable world, they remain a source of support, refuge and solace.
Andrew is a marital therapist and author of I Love You but I’m Not in Love with You (Bloomsbury, £10.99)
JOHN NAISH
'In this feminised age, women are encouraged to expect too much'
My father was a tweedy bloke, brought up in an era when a chap should just have a job and a hobby and leave all the domestic stuff to his good woman. But Dad could be moved to tears by hearing something terrible on the news. And he loved to cook. So he was considered a bit of an odd fish.
These days, emoting and compoting are de rigueur for any eligible middle-class male. Expectations of men in relationships have been growing hugely since the 1970s, with the advent of our feminised society. But expectations can be made to run too far.
In former times, a man could remain socially cack-handed but reasonably expect that a young woman would take him on. After all, until the 1970s young women had to find a man to marry in order be socially respectable, to have children born “on the right side of the blanket” and even to get a mortgage. Now that women don’t need a man to function in society, they are free to raise the bar on male behaviour.
A lot of men are happy to meet the challenge. But many are just not wired that way. It’s surely no coincidence that we are witnessing an explosion in diagnoses of Asperger’s syndrome, a spectrum disorder that mostly affects males and runs from normal to mild autism.
Somewhere at the “normal” end, what we really get is “bloke being bloke-ish” syndrome: difficulty communicating or expressing emotions; obsession with arcane information such as football statistics or car engines. Modern society doesn’t like this and defines it as illness.
There have always been clashes of expectations between the genders. You only have to read Chaucer’s Wife Of Bath’s Tale to see how deeply it is ingrained. And high aspirations can indeed improve civilised behaviour. But this modern clash is spinning beyond reconciliation, thanks to our have-it-all society, and particularly the women’s media, which continually ups the ante for what gals should expect of blokes.
The latest perfect male should be a warrior in the workplace and six-pack god in the gym, as well as an angel in the kitchen, whore in the bedroom, deity of dadhood and metrosexual wonder in the wardrobe department. Faced with ever more expectations, how do men respond? Many gamely take up the gauntlet. But plenty of others just retreat into the sexist, lads’-mag world of Zoo and Nuts. Thus the number of male heterosexual paragons is shrinking, while the list of Sex And The City-inspired requirements grows ever longer. The result? Steadily accruing dissatisfaction on both sides.
John is the author of Put What Where? 2,000 years of Bizarre Sex Advice (HarperCollins, £9.99)
SUZI GODSON
'When it comes to sex, women know they've never had it so good'
That we are even at liberty to discuss this question is testament to just how much modern life has improved our sexual relationships. We may whinge about stress and how little “quality time” we have, and how we are so exhausted by our mesmerisingly busy modern lives, but when it comes to sex, each and every one of us knows that women have never had it so good.
Though women have been having sex since Eve first took a bite of the apple, it has never really been viewed as recreational. Even 100 years ago, sexual intercourse was a game of roulette where the jackpot was either a baby or a dose of syphilis. As for female orgasm? Forget it. Sex between a man and a woman was about procreation not pleasure and female sexuality was policed by women such as Mary Wood Allen, MD, s uperintendent of the Purity Department of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who believed that “the most genuine love between a husband and a wife existed in the lofty sphere of platonic embrace”.
The invention of the Pill in the Sixties changed irrevocably the sexual status quo. At the time feminists argued that the ensuing sexual revolution was a male invention that served to create more free sex for men but neglected to address women’s sexual pleasure and orgasm. And they were probably right. Having been repressed for centuries, women didn’t collectively turn into self-assured sextroverts overnight.
Though women exhibited a more exuberant exterior, shorter skirts didn’t reflect greater sexual confidence. Nor did kaftans. The Seventies brought a choice between The Joy of Sex, bearded male wisdoms about the kind of sex that happens only in sex books; or Betty Dodson’s full-on feminism, group masturbation with the help of an Hitachi Magic Wand vibrator.
Since women didn’t feel confident enough to consult a sex manual, this was largely irrelevant.
In the early Nineties a second, and in some ways more important, revolution occurred — the internet. This gave women private access to the kind of practical so-that’s-how-you-do-it instruction that they had always needed but had been unable, or unwilling, to seek out in public. Anonymity allowed them to venture into unknown territory — porn sites, webcams, chatrooms — and online shopping for sex toys, lingerie etc turned them into sexual consumers.
The upside of all this has been greater sexual confidence. The downside? The fact that we already take our new-found freedoms for granted. We whinge about stress, how little “quality time” we have, and how we are so exhausted by our mesmerisingly busy modern lives.
Suzi has written The Sex Book (Cassell, £9.99)
JANE FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL
'Technology has brought young and old closer together'
The stresses of modern life have made the grandparent-grandchild relationship more important than ever. Many people of my generation have trouble adjusting to that great modern benefit, computer technology. Those of us who grew up with neither a computer nor TV can be slow to embrace new technology. Some of us fear computers and marvel at the expertise of our grandchildren, who play computer games before they can read and write. We enjoy appealing to them for help with the computer and have been heard to boast to each other that we have to ask a three-year-old to operate the video and DVD.
The technical incompetence of oldies may make some children look on their elders with pity, but they enjoy being able to teach us new tricks, and mutual affection is increased.
For parents, modern technology has made professional advice about all aspects of family life so accessible that granny’s status as wise woman of the tribe is diminished. Why ask your mum what to do when your toddler refuses to eat his lunch, or to go to sleep in his own bed, when you can look it up in a dozen books, watch how to do it on TV or simply Google it? But if parents no longer want advice from their mothers or mothers-in-law, they do turn to them for hands-on childcare. It has become the norm for mothers to work and in many families grandparents, if available, are the first choice as carers. This gives the special relationship between grandparent and grandchild time to develop into a close bond that can be very reassuring to a child inhabiting a complex, often chaotic and sometimes hostile world.
How simple life would be if for every latch-key kid there was a granny. But in the modern world, grandparents are as likely to live 100 miles away as next door. In my childhood the telephone was used to make urgent arrangements and to convey urgent news, and an unnecessary phone call was considered extravagant. Grandparents would never dream of ringing a grandchild just for a chat. Now, thanks to mobile phones, such conversations take place any time, anywhere. A child with a problem can find a sympathetic ear with a grandparent when Mum is in a meeting and Dad’s on a motorway.
The pressures of modern life mean that time is in short supply, and this makes it difficult for parents and children to keep their relationships in good repair. As a result, relationships between children and their grandparents are often closer and more important than in the past.
Jane is the author of The Good Granny Guide (Short Books, £10)
Join the debate
You can have your say at timesonline.co.uk/love and, if you would like to take part in the debate with our writers, we have 15 free passes for the first readers to e-mail us by Monday at body&soul@thetimes.co.uk. Usually open only to members of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy the debate is at the Business Design Centre in Islington, North London, on October 6, 11am to 12pm.
All readers can visit the Therapy Today exhibition at the same venue on October 6 and 7, which brings together 3,000 professionals with those interested in joining the profession. And drop in on the Body&Soul Wellbeing Zone to get a free hand massage. Admission is free; you can register there. (therapytodayexhibition.com)
