Men’s evil manners lives in brass,

Their virtue we write in water.

— Shakespeare

How use doth breed a habit

In a man.

— Shakespeare

Men seem to be always getting a hard time from women who somehow always find something negative to say about them. Is it because women deep down don’t understand men, or is it because they understand them but wish that they weren’t the way that they are?

Let’s take those two quotes above that address the male persona. The first one points to the fact that any bad thing that a man does is etched in brass, carved in stone, chiselled in concrete, permanent. But in contrast, any virtue that he may have is written in water, never permanent, ephemeral, and soon forgotten

Try writing anything in water and you’ll catch my drift.

The second quote points to the fact that use, what a man does all the time, eventually becomes a habit. And men certainly have many habits, all bad, as far as most women see it.

One habit or characteristic that men have is the art of placing things in separate regions of their psyche, not letting one interfere with the other, ergo, they compartmentalise.

Do they really do that though, and if so, why and how do they do it? Do those separate compartments protect the men, or simply show that they are fragile? And is this unique to men, or do women also compartmentalise?

All these questions and more we’ll examine, right after these responses to what I had to say about ‘Marriage changes you’.

Hi Tony,

As you stated, marriage changes some people, and in others, marriage brings out their true self. I believe though, that most people change because life experiences change them. Some get better, some get worse, some get richer, some get poorer, some experience sickness and health. Why do those words seem so familiar?

Marco

Hey Teerob,

I think that it’s not marriage that changes you, but it’s just a natural occurrence as you pass through the passage of time. Now, if you spend enough time together, then it occurs synonymously and you remain similar. However, if you are both living your own lives, then you become different people.

Pardy

I always seem to be in earshot of women as they prattle about men and their faults. Last week was no different, as I overheard two ladies asking each other why men compartmentalise so much. Such a big word for what appears to be a small, simple action.

Compartmentalise: Divide into discrete sections or categories. To wit, “He has the ability to compartmentalise his life.”

It seems to be a characteristic of men that enables them to survive the emotional upheavals that they face every day.

I know that I do it, but I never studied the science behind it until now. What I do know is that I use it for protection and self-preservation. Lo and behold, it seems that I was on the right track all along, as science has corroborated my actions.

One research paper says: It’s a form of emotional intelligence, according to Jeremy Yip, a lecturer and research scholar at Wharton University. ‘Compartmentalising enables a person to identify what is stressing them out and to allow other unrelated factors in their life to stand on their own merits.’

Research also says that men generally compartmentalise their emotions in order to protect themselves from feeling vulnerable. One of the biggest complaints that women tend to have about men is that they sometimes seem emotionally unavailable, or distant.

“Men tend to compartmentalise their feelings and thoughts about, well, pretty much everything.”

I say all this because those two aforementioned ladies were bewildered, befuddled and blown away by the fact that men do this so easily. Apparently one of them was speaking to a man who was about to be married, and while in conversation about his upcoming nuptials, the man casually asked her about sex.

Say what? Har mout drop open. In other words, even while talking about getting married and his bride to be, in the same breath, he’s putting argument to her.

“Hey baby, how about you and me doing a little thing before my big day?”

Is that why men have premarital bachelor parties?

That’s because men have the ability and capacity to compartmentalise and separate one area of their lives from another. That’s when one lady fumingly asked the question of her friend, “Why do men compartmentalise and how do they do it?”

Men do it because they have to, and by achieving this feat, they are able to detach themselves from emotional adhesion. The fact that the man mentioned that he was getting had no bearing on him requesting sex from that lady. “It’s just sex, no emotional attachments, just hit it and move on.”

As some men declare, “Is not wife me a look.” And that’s why men are able to be happily married, yet also have a happy, vibrant relationship on the side with another woman for many, many years. If he didn’t compartmentalise different areas of his life, he’d be an emotional wreck.

By so doing, he can carefully separate the life with his mistress from the life with his wife and children, as there is no blurring of the lines, no conflating of the issues, no merging of the emotions. Of course he loves his wife, but he also shares a large part of his life with his mistress, his sexual life.

In contrast, women have a difficulty in doing this, and very often turn into emotional basket cases if they try to deal with two men at the same time on the same emotional level. Sure, they’ll have a fling, as many do, but after a while, women become emotionally attached to one and have to choose.

‘Torn between two lovers,

Feeling like a fool,

Loving both of you

Is breaking all the rules. ‘

Remember that song by Dusty Springfield?

“I can’t continue like this, I can’t deal with it, it’s driving me crazy, I have to leave him for you.”

You can’t serve two masters, lest you love one and hate the other, says the Bible. Perhaps that only applies to women, for men find a way to do so by compartmentalising.

He may not serve two masters, but he serves a mistress and one master, if you know what I mean. Now, I’m by no means referring to those young women who juggle three or four men at the same time, for that’s strictly an economic endeavour with no emotions involved.

Because of compartmentalisation a man can leave his woman at home, pick up a prostitute, have sex, than go back home to his wife with no feelings of guilt or emotional conflict.

If he didn’t compartmentalise, he certainly could not do that. As for the men who cannot compartmentalise, they’re in big trouble. They’re in the minority, but as the old saying goes, there are exceptions to every rule.

Those men do not possess that characteristic, and are subject to emotional pain, making them vulnerable, making them exposed, so as soon as they get involved with someone else and start to show feelings, the wife knows.

“I could tell by the way he was acting that he was up to something, everything about him changed.”

Busted, even though he wasn’t caught in the act and there was no physical evidence, his lack of the ability to compartmentalise was his downfall.

For the woman who cannot compartmentalise, she loses all sexual urges for her husband, but at least she can still go through the motions. Did someone say fake it? For the man who can’t compartmentalise though, that can be a disaster, for the moment that he develops sexual urges for another woman, he loses them for his wife, and that’s a dead giveaway, pardon the pun. His sexual desire diminishes in equal and inverse proportion for his wife as it increases for his mistress.

“You find somebody else, that’s why you don’t want me anymore.”

For the man who’s able to compartmentalise, even if his woman vex with him beyond belief, he’s still able to have sex with her. That’s because he simply places emotions and physical feelings in separate compartments, and it’s business as usual.

In contrast, when a woman vex wid har man, you can be assured that nothing’s going to happen.

“Are you crazy? I’m still angry, just don’t touch me!”

In fact, she don’t even have to vex. Anything else will shut her down, such as thinking about work, worrying about pickney, fretting about her friend will do it.

“How can you expect me to have sex when my friend is sick in the hospital?”

So back to those ladies, or all ladies for that matter, who are perplexed by men’s ability to compartmentalise. Don’t be, it’s the male mechanism for emotional stability, for peace of mind, to maintain sanity in this topsy-turvy, convoluted world of emotional turmoil.

More time.

seido1yard@gmail.com

Footnote: We glorify badness and then we wonder why crime has got out of hand. Our media promotes the music of convicted criminals. University lecturers elevate and glorify them too, instead of showcasing the accomplishments of young brilliant students. A man was caught on video abusing and forcing people out of a taxi during a strike, next thing he is publicly rewarded and given a trophy by a media house. Taximen rack up thousands of tickets yet demand an amnesty, and justify it too. No wonder people say that Jamaica is not a real place. There’s a video circulating of a man pulling his firearm on a mentally unstable street person who was approaching him. He has all the right to do so as those people can be dangerous and have killed people. You cannot fight them physically as they are incredibly strong.