How To Motivate Men

How To Motivate Men

Clay Watkins, LMFT

The article below appeared in The Women’s Press and was written by Clay Watkins, a staff therapist at Village Counseling Center in Arroyo Grande, California. It is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there is also much truth in it as well.

As a marriage and family therapist, women often ask me how to motivate the males in their lives. They regale me with descriptions of the elaborate schemes they use involving requests, begging, nagging, even withholding of sex. They also tell me these don’t work. And whether the issue is getting their son to take out the trash, persuading their boyfriend to propose, or convincing their husband to stop asking the kids to pull his finger, it always centers around the same wrong assumption; that men mature at the same rate women do.

Now most of us realize little girls and boys mature at different rates in our society. Whether due to genetics or socialization, girls are generally first to grasp the complexities of relationships, the ambiguities of morals and ethics, the intricacies of personal hygiene. The mistake women make when addressing adult male behavior, however, is assuming men eventually catch up to them in the maturity department. It is difficult to emphasize how fully incorrect this assumption is. It is akin to expecting a Shetland pony to catch up with a thoroughbred. It will never happen.

Feel free to ask any man about this. They will all back me up. Maturity just doesn’t come naturally to us, ladies. We see the need for it, we may even attempt it occasionally, but for some reason it just doesn’t compute for us. Just like when you try to get a new puppy to poop on the paper instead of the carpet, when you ask us men to be adults, all we can do is sit and look at you with puppy dog eyes. Maturity? Appropriate behavior? Hmmm. Yeah. Sorry. Could you spell it?

You see, American males hold many concepts dear; the importance of democracy, the value of a free capitalist market, the need for a balanced distribution of skills in society. In fact, we believe this last concept applies to male-female relationships specifically, and stands as a cornerstone to our resistance to all things responsible. To elaborate, we men consider it an inefficient relational model to create redundant strengths within a couple. And since women have a natural propensity toward maturity in relationships, it seems to us only reasonable to let you be the leaders in that category. Our reasoning goes even one step further: it would be downright wasteful for us men to expend energy duplicating that maturity thing. No use reinventing the wheel, right? Moreover, this logical allocation of responsibility has the inherent benefit of allowing us men to concentrate on perfecting those skills by which we come more naturally, like burping, or passing the car in front of us, or racing at top speed through television channels.

To motivate men, therefore, one must first accept this basic supposition, that for a society to be productive, men must be treated like boys. We’re not proud of it, but we all accept it.

A second supposition is just as crucial; that we men do not like being told what to do. We will, in fact, make it our main goal in life to do the exact opposite of what we are told to do, even when it is to our detriment to do so. Now when my teen clients exhibit this behavior, I label it Oppositional Defiant Disorder. When the husband of a client shows this tendency I just call it gender normal.

Finally, I submit a related mixed-metaphor axiom; that men respond better to carrots than they do to beatings. I think I can speak with some experience, that to understand the conundrum that is the male mind, one must grasp the value of positive rewards over the use of punishment, at least in regard to motivating or changing a man’s behavior. Let’s face it, superficial obedience is the best result one can expect from solely applying punishment to manipulate an adult male. Like the little boy in the back of the bus who says while compliantly sitting after being forcefully told to do so by the bus driver, most men will respond by saying, “I may be sitting on the outside, but I’m standing on the inside!”

So moving on from these underlying beliefs, how does one actually motivate men to change, improve, or at least quit armpit-farting in public? Ah, Grasshopper, it is simpler than you might have imagined.

First, a few things to avoid:

1.   Never ask men for a personality change. Be content if their behavior changes. If you are patient, their personality will mold itself around the behavior; it just takes a while.

2.   Do not ask us men to feel the way you do as a precursor to change. Men’s emotions are the caboose on the train, not the engine. Don’t ask why this is; we don’t understand it either.

Second, some ideas on how to motivate men:

3.   Realize the importance of the male ego and use it to your advantage. This is not manipulative as much as it is merely realistic. A man will never change unless he can do so with his self-esteem intact. I suggest you use the Oreo approach; enclose the essence of your request in the tasty cookie of a compliment. “Honey, as good as you are at fixing things around the house, do you think you could oil that squeaky door in the bedroom? I know you’re busy, but I also know how important it is to you to keep everything working just right.” Sure, it’s corny and an obvious use of flattery, but just try it. Chances are good he won’t notice. Remember, you’re not working with an adult; you’re working with a child in an adult body.

4.   When a man does something you want or have asked him to do, ask how he did it. We men love to explain our successes. And the more we feel we have succeeded at an activity, the more likely we are to repeat it. You say (sans even a hint of sarcasm), “Honey, I noticed you picked up all your socks yesterday and put them in the hamper. What made you do that?” Now he is free to elucidate on the complexities of how he decisively chose to move down the path of personal cleanliness. Listen with a straight face and you will reap long-lasting behavioral rewards.

5.   Use his natural opposition to motivate him. This should not be confused with shaming a man into doing what you want, which, though effective in the short-term, is not a useful long-term solution. We men often need to push against something to get motivated. We are warriors in search of an enemy against whom to fight. By stating your opinion on something your man has (or has not) done, you provide him a stable position, a starting block if you will, from which to initiate his movement toward a goal. Similar to the reverse psychology of the 1960s, therapists now label this type of intervention strategic. When your husband ignores subtle hints or direct requests to fix the back gate, you say, “Sweetie, I’ve been thinking that broken gate may be too difficult for you to fix by yourself, so I scheduled a fix-it man to come on Monday to repair it.” It may not work, but then again it might. The key, again, is to deliver your lines without the least bit of sarcasm, letting his natural motivation fuel his actions.

Certainly there are many more ways of motivating men than can be covered in a short article such as this, but these suggestions should get you started. It may not be possible for women to ever fully understand men, but it is possible for the genders to work effectively together, as long as the women of the world are willing to be patient, and put up with an occasional noisy bodily function or two.

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