Why Love and Family Give Men Purpose: A Different Perspective on Motivation

4. A man cannot work for himself; quite simply, he cannot clearly define goals or directions. He needs a woman to show him the way, to indicate what they should achieve together. She is the one who envisions their shared life, the big plans, dreams up the family home, brings children into the world, and breathes life into everything that is called family or partnership. “If I argue with my wife,” says a friend of mine, “I don’t even feel like working. Why would I? Just to have something for myself? That doesn’t interest me, it leads nowhere, it’s not motivating. But my family, my wife—that does. It’s worth working for them, for my children. A man cannot get up and go to the office just to someday have money for an apartment or anything else. It’s completely meaningless; even if he gets a flat or a car, he cannot create a home. Maintaining it, keeping it in order—that’s not his role. A man’s job, then as now, is to lay the foundations so that a woman can build something beautiful, something human, from them. Like it or not, this is the truth: a man can earn as much money as he wants, but it’s all meaningless if there is no one to turn it into something real.” I don’t know what it depends on whether a man is able to see things this way; perhaps it’s a matter of time, perhaps a bit of intelligence too. One thing is certain: over time, everything becomes siiiimpler. A person no longer argues over trivialities; he knows exactly what is important and what is not. For me today, it’s no longer important to be right; I prefer things to go the way my wife wants, so that she is happy, because that is good for the children and for me as well.

Sometimes I watch her as she argues with the kids, and yes, occasionally I disagree with her decisions, but I don’t want to override them, because everything will work out anyway, everything will unfold as it should. I know, I see, that she loves our children and will never put her own ideas ahead of their best interests. She is simply a wonderful mother; I can trust her with myself and with our children. Because responsibility always falls on the woman, the man is somehow weaker in this as well, as he is generally in emotional and human matters, she continues. I think it’s best to leave the running of life to women; we stay with the companies, the businesses, play around with things, and leave the important life decisions to the women, because, whether we admit it or not, they understand it best. Agatha Seymour /This piece was written years ago. As I return, it finds its place here once again, unchanged./