Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

pineapple juice, and in that singular act, in that one moment,
his lady shoved into his face that she didn’t consider him to be
a man. It was more important to her in that moment to prove
what he already knew—that he wasn’t fulfilling his role as a
provider. I’m not suggesting that she didn’t have the right to
have a man who was pulling his weight. But if she knew him—
and men—she would have understood that making him feel
less than a man wasn’t going to get her what she needed and
wanted out of her man. Her actions were only going to drive
him away.
Not long after, he left her.
And that is pretty much the reaction you can expect from
men in similar situations where a woman makes more than her
partner and she rubs that fact in his face. Will he be intimidated
by your money and your success? Of course. Because you’re
taking him out of his role as a man—to be the provider. It’s
what society expects of him, and really, what you’ve been
taught to expect of men, too—that he be able to sweep you up
and take care of you. Sure, when a man is young and doesn’t
know any better, he’s busy being all this other stuff he thinks
fits into what it means to be a man: dating an excess of women;
recklessly spending his money on things he doesn’t really need,
much less can afford; using his muscle instead of his brain in his
quest to appear tough. But most of us grow out of this eventu-
ally, and when we do, we recognize that a real man provides for
the ones he loves. Even a male convict will sit behind bars and