the Upbringing

4 -The upbringing


In our society the male is brought up to be extremely confident and self assured –that is the goal-, this upbringing may cause an opposite results and the male becomes insecure, whatever the results turned out, whether becoming a person with a strong personality or an insecure person, the male in the middle eastern society will not submit the fact that he may be in the wrong, or that there might be other ways to achieve the same goals, or that each person is entitled to his or her own opinion no matter of the outcome, in his own opinion there is no ways better than his own, and no other opinions matter, even when the realities prove him mistaken, it is extremely rare that we can see the male admits to be incorrect or changes his ways or approaches.
The rule of thumb in the eastern societies is; never confront a male of his mistakes.

This leads me to the upbringing issue

Growing up I used to hear the eldest in the family saying:

Your husband is the product of how you treat him, while your son is the product of how you raise him

This is proven to be absolutely true.
The psyche of the Middle Eastern male is the product of their mothers many mistakes in their upbringing, as well as the product of the society that influenced male righteous strong image.

For example:
When a little boy falls down and comes running crying to his mother’s lap, she firmly tells him;
A man never cries.
You are too strong to be hurt from this little fall. A man feels no pain
A man shows no pain,
A man does not display hurt
If a little boy is scared from the dark or from a big dog in the neighborhood, or from strange sounds at night, the response will be
A man shows no fear
A man is never afraid

In my personal opinion, this is extreme. This little boy grows up to become a man with too many incorrect expectation, his psyche is loaded with wrong approaches, these saying are engraved in his soul, and growing up he starts applying them in all aspects of his life. It will be hard for him to show fear, to show emotions, to admit being hurt, to admit ignorance. What make matters worse is that he is completely unaware of all the flaws in his personality.

Which leads us back to my question: how a smart woman will approach her male??
The key word is SMART.
Smart does not necessarily mean an educated person. It is about being socially smart, understanding the male psyche and knowing how to deal with it. And that leads us to the fifth component affecting the psyche of Middle Eastern men.