{"id":368,"date":"2015-02-11T07:21:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T12:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/why-men-dont-va-1\/"},"modified":"2015-02-10T21:05:40","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T02:05:40","slug":"why-men-dont-value-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/why-men-dont-value-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Men Don&#8217;t Value Women"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Considering where we&#8217;re at in America (the world too) today, I felt moved to put this post from 2010 out again. I&#8217;m still learning&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/tumblr_ncdp0wVePr1sfie3io1_1280.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1547\" src=\"http:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/tumblr_ncdp0wVePr1sfie3io1_1280-300x230.jpg\" alt=\"Hospital sisters picnic beside the Katherine River, Northern Territory \/ Arthur Groom\" width=\"300\" height=\"230\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/tumblr_ncdp0wVePr1sfie3io1_1280-300x230.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/tumblr_ncdp0wVePr1sfie3io1_1280.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking lately about what we value and what we don&#8217;t.\u00a0 This is important because our values do define our lives.<\/p>\n<p>For example, if your career is what you value most, then everything (I mean everything) will be second to that.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not writing to judge, just stating a reality.\u00a0 It&#8217;s ironic how little values are considered in our current age.<\/p>\n<p>The above brings me to why men (significant numbers) don&#8217;t value their women.\u00a0 I know this post might generate some scathing comments, but I speak as a recovering jerk in the area of valuing my wife and\u00a0her motherhood.<\/p>\n<p>I worked, as many readers\/subscribers know, in corporate America for many years.\u00a0 The majority of that was at a senior level.\u00a0 And yes, I drank the kool-aid, participated in the rah, rah sessions and terminated the employment of people who were deemed disposable.\u00a0 I was paid well and thought (at times) my path was only going to get better.<\/p>\n<p>During this time my wife gave up her career to raise our two children.\u00a0 This decision was mutually agreed upon.\u00a0 The idea of her being the primary care-giver seemed like the right thing to do.\u00a0 To this day, I would say our children are the better for this decision.<\/p>\n<p>But along the way I began to see our roles as separate and equal.\u00a0 She took care of things at home and I took care of things career related.\u00a0 There were times when we&#8217;d share the burdens, but I thought little about her struggles and work load.\u00a0 After all, I saw it as her role\/job.\u00a0 The &#8220;taking things for granted&#8221; process settled in.<\/p>\n<p>Many times she would call me at the office to vent or seek affirmation.\u00a0 I gave her words, but not my heart.\u00a0 Life went on, money was made and security (perceived) became the normal.\u00a0 We lived this way for almost ten years, and then things changed.\u00a0 My wife went back to work and corporate America said goodbye to me.\u00a0 \u00a0I became a man who did many different things (author, consultant and stay-at-home dad).\u00a0 All of sudden the world looked strange.\u00a0 For example, work on the book manuscript and make sure my son got to preschool.\u00a0 Ironically, after about six months, I found myself longing for affirmation and encouragement from my wife for all of my hard work at home.\u00a0 I felt like a man exposed by his ghosts.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t claim that my experiences are unique or more important than other men.\u00a0 But here are the reasons why many men don&#8217;t value their wives or motherhood:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>As men we are taught early on that <strong>money makes<\/strong> the world go round and you&#8217;d better work hard to get it.\u00a0 Therefore, making money becomes part of our root system.\u00a0 Like a tenacious weed.<\/li>\n<li>We assign roles without understanding or caring.\u00a0 I made so many assumptions without taking the time to understand my wife&#8217;s greatest needs.<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;re too busy (<strong>cop-out<\/strong>) to give the attention where it&#8217;s needed.\u00a0 We decide that our wives are fine in our mind, and then we just move on.<\/li>\n<li>We don&#8217;t evaluate the magnitude of motherhood.\u00a0 We don&#8217;t consider what our wives went through to carry and birth a child, let alone be the primary caregiver.<\/li>\n<li>Being a wife and mother doesn&#8217;t, in form, produce money.\u00a0 Assigning value becomes tough and we just take it for granted.\u00a0 If wives and mothers started being paid for what they deal with, we&#8217;d probably stand-up and take notice.\u00a0 But it would be too late to applaud then.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The Eric that walked the halls of corporate America is <strong><em>dead<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 The post-corporate America Eric is learning how to live and has been given a chance to be remade.\u00a0 It&#8217;s very difficult to live differently.\u00a0\u00a0But I have found a life worth living-Epic if I may so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Considering where we&#8217;re at in America (the world too) today, I felt moved to put this post from 2010 out again. I&#8217;m still learning&#8230; I&#8217;ve been thinking lately about what we value and what we don&#8217;t.\u00a0 This is important because our values do define our lives. For example, if your career is what you value&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,5,123,6],"tags":[22,23,336,1364,269,119,1365,477],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career-2","category-entrepreneur-advice","category-leadership-development","category-learning","tag-business","tag-career","tag-leadership","tag-motherhood","tag-professional-development","tag-self-help","tag-stay-at-home-moms","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1546,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/1546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}