Sheryl Sandberg does not give good advice.
From her considerable perch over the last 10 years, Sandberg has told women to “lean in” to their careers at the expense of being with their children. She has insisted men and women live identical lives, as though there are no differences between them that dictate their disparate yet equally valuable choices. Now she’s telling women to orchestrate their own marriage proposals, rather than waiting to be asked.
“It seems to me that many women take charge of their lives in every way except dating and marriage,” she said. “They don’t hand the reigns of their educations or careers to someone else, but they wait for their boyfriends to make this huge decision for them.”
Wait for their boyfriends to make this huge decision for them? Last time I checked, a marriage proposal is a request, not a demand.
It never ceases to amaze me how Sandberg can take a benign event — remember the #BanBossy campaign she launched as payback for being told she’s too bossy? — and wrap it up in a feminist bow to make women feel like they’re backward for not choosing, as Sandberg does, to control everyone and everything in their midst.
There’s a perfectly good reason most women don’t approach their love lives the same way they do their professional lives: Those are two entirely separate domains.
“Taking the reins” may get women ahead at work, but if they use this same approach in love, they will fail. Indeed, any woman who follows Sandberg’s advice over and over again will almost certainly need relationship coaching within 10 years.
How do I know? Almost all of my coaching clients are dealing with the same problem. They followed the advice of their feminist mothers and mentors and have come to regret it. They viewed men and marriage through an equality lens and assumed the sexes are “equal,” as though it doesn’t matter who does what because the sexes are ultimately interchangeable.
This bogus worldview fosters competition between women and men, rather than cooperation. The results are ugly.
The women I coach have almost all been groomed to “never depend on a man,” to view femininity as weakness, to become their own providers and protectors, and to value career over marriage and family. Those who did get married chose soft men who willingly relinquished their masculine identity in order to let the women lead. As a result, their relationships are a disaster.
Here’s the latest example:
Here’s another:
And another:
These examples merely scratch the surface. I’m not exaggerating when I say I could fill endless pages with similar stories. As one client named Karie, who makes $400,000 a year while her husband stays home, wrote, “The feminist message is so strong. It is not good. It is not right.”
Of course, it’s not right. Not only is the equality argument false on its face, men and women are as different as night and day, the message is entirely self-serving. Sandberg couldn’t care less about women’s happiness and well-being. She has an agenda, and that agenda demands women live their lives the way Sandberg lives hers. It’s the only way she can achieve her dream: “A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.”
But Sandberg’s chosen path represents a small fraction of the female population, as evidenced by feminists’ relentless complaint that there are too few women at the top. To rectify this supposed problem, they sell the bogus idea that living a life like Sandberg’s equates to empowerment.
In fact, there’s nothing empowering about suppressing the desire to make marriage and motherhood the center of one’s life, or even to date the traditional way, where the man is the pursuer and the woman is the prize, particularly, for the sake of politics. Sandberg may want more estrogen in the boardroom, but that’s for her benefit, not for yours.
By the time they’re in their mid-to-late 30s, most women experience a shift in priorities and come to regret having romanticized and envied a man’s life. They realize the entire feminist premise is based on a lie. Men and women may be equal in value, but they are wildly different by nature. Indeed, women who win at love do the exact opposite of what Sandberg suggests. They may “take the reigns” at work, but they let go of those reigns when they get home. At home, in their personal lives, they utilize a different kind of power: feminine power.
Feminine power is the balance to masculine power. Most men are hunters by nature and are therefore drawn to soft, nurturing women, not to bossy, domineering ones. Women are gatherers by nature. They’re relational beings who intuit and dream and empathize. They’re naturally drawn to masculine men who know how to lead.
To be clear, I don’t mean men who know how to dictate; I mean men who know how to lead. There’s a difference.
It isn’t sameness that makes a relationship work, but the yin and yang of masculine and feminine power. Any woman who acts like a man by “taking the reigns,” as Sandberg suggests, will not attract a masculine man. She will attract the exact opposite kind of man, a soft male. Over time, he will come to resent her, and she will lose whatever respect she once had for him if she had any at all.
If you don’t believe me, I have countless clients who’d be happy to talk to you.
Suzanne Venker (@SuzanneVenker) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She’s the author of five books and a relationship coach, as well as host of The Suzanne Venker Show. Her website is www.suzannevenker.com.
