Is it a mistake to reveal insecurities to your wife?

One of the pieces of advice that's being offered to young men online is that they should never disclose their insecurities or their fears to their wives. The idea being that this will cause the wives to lose respect for them as men and they will immediately start looking for somebody else. Now, this type of advice on masculinity is typical of the type of advice that you find online which sort of falls under the category of counseling men to be fake. They are implicitly saying that most men, as they are, cannot possibly hope to have a successful relationship with a woman because they believe that women really want in a man for him to be basically a cartoon superhero character from a comic book, the type of male role models that young boys admire. That is to say, they believe that women are only interested in men who exhibit stereotypical masculine traits that young boys who feel inadequate about themselves imagine to be ideal.

They're not thinking about or researching what women actually value, what they say they want, and they're not even looking at the traits of men who have been successfully married for decades. They are essentially projecting onto women a desire for stereotypical masculine traits which they themselves think are ideal. This is why these same masculinity gurus are baffled by women finding k pop stars and boy band singers attractive. They imagine that the one western stereotype of masculinity is the only version of being a man and the only thing women find attractive despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They're also projecting onto women a superficiality that suggests only one of two possibilities about them.

One is that they have never actually had a relationship with a woman or that the only relationships they've had with women have been with shallow silly women. We know that Rasulullah did not hesitate to reveal to Khadija his fear and self doubt after his first encounter with Jibril And we know that Khadija's response was not to lose respect for Rasulullah and to immediately start looking for a more confident man. Look, men generally do not express their emotions. We are not accustomed to revealing our insecurities. We do not work through such things the same way that women do.

No one should push men to sort these matters out in ways that do not suit our nature. However, what we are supposed to have with our wives is repose, comfort, and support. We are not supposed to have to be on guard all the time, defensive, and we're not supposed to have to maintain the same demeanor at home that we maintain outside. Part of deepening a relationship with someone is confiding in them, trusting them, and allowing them to see the internal layers of ourselves that we don't allow others to see. If you are unable to do that with your wife because she will judge you harshly or think less of you, then you simply made a poor choice in marriage.

If you reveal to your wife the things that you feel insecure about or that you are afraid of, she's unlikely to think less of you, particularly if you are still carrying on with whatever it is that you have to do despite these insecurities and fears. That will just make her better appreciate your effort and your struggle and she will recognize your strength even more because she understands how hard it is to do what you have to do. Now, it's different if you just get into the habit of complaining and whining about your problems and your insecurities. Nobody likes that. That weakens you.

But simply confiding in your wife about things that you feel insecure about or are unsure about, this in and of itself is not weakness. But just simply confiding in your wife about things that you feel insecure about or are unsure about, this in and of itself is not weakness and it will not be interpreted as weakness by her. At the end of the day, no advice is good advice if it encourages you to be fake, if it encourages you to be or to feel other than the way you do actually feel and the way you actually are. Good advice about insecurities will help you overcome them, not hide them. And good relationship advice would be about how to remove barriers between you and your wife, not about how to erect and maintain more barriers.

Because the whole point should be that you can find someone with whom you can be honestly your self, not someone with whom you have to continuously play a part. You cannot actually fake being strong. You can't actually fake being a leader for any lengthy period of time. Even if you do this, believe me, she will know that it is fake and that will cause an erosion of her respect for you even more than if you were just honest. Again, if you have to treat your wife the same way that you treat a stranger or an enemy who you cannot trust, then your relationship is bad from the get go and it will not succeed.