Day 165: Do we Know What it Means to be a Guy?

While watching some bad television show the other day a male character confessed he sometimes goes to a strip club just to have a drink and get away. “Sometimes a guy just needs to be a guy,” he said. Sure, that makes sense, I get that. Wait . . . what does it mean if your guy doesn’t want to drink at a strip club just to be a guy? Is my guy broken? Is he not a guy? Am I keeping him from being a guy? What the hell is going on?

Jeff will go to strip clubs with me. I’m going to say I’m nearly 100 percent certain he’s a guy. So if it makes so much sense that a guy just likes to have a beer while watching strippers, how come my guy doesn’t wanna go? By what standards do we measure what it means to be a guy and isn’t it possible that those standards are outdated? Jeff likes women and will not object should a hot one decide to take off her clothes and dance in front of him, but he’s, well he’s a brain. Jeff is a voracious reader, consummate professional, and socially enlightened. He does not have that “typical guy” cave man quality that leads us to make generalizations such as “boys will be boys” or “that’s how guys are.” Though he’s not a sensitive 90’s guy either. You remember the 90’s? That’s when men all grew pony tails, listened to soulful grunge music and tried to be sensitive because that’s what they thought we wanted.

I like sensitive in some ways, but I don’t want my guy to be crying and reading me poetry every day. I need a man. So what does that mean? Jeff is a soldier, that’s macho. He has a hairy chest, macho. Whiskers that grow a five o’clock shadow 30 minutes after he shaves, macho. Can he be macho if he doesn’t seek out T n’ A while having a beer? I like macho men, I like sweaty, wallet chain, leather boot wearing biker types and none of those men are Jeff. So forget for a minute that we’re trying to discover what type of man my husband is and ask instead what kind of woman I am? Do I really want Dean Winchester when I have Sam Winchester (if you’re not watching Supernatural you should have started three years ago)? What smart woman wants the stereotypical guy at the strip club?

I am constantly reevaluating myself, my life, my emotional health and what I need. Jeff is not the evaluator I am in his personal life. Maybe he’s just enough hard-core male, just enough sensitive ponytail. Women have been so conditioned by fairy tales, society, high school and everything else that we believe men have to be macho jerks who dig beer and strippers. The issue isn’t finding the typical macho jerk that is also sensitive enough that you can overlook the jerk part, it’s in retraining ourselves to want what is healthy and good for us. The bad boy is actually bad. Life isn’t like a movie, Wolverine isn’t really a tortured soul, he’s just a hairy killer. I guess the answer to my second question is that I’m the type of woman that finally realized the impulse buy doesn’t make me as happy as the wise investment.