Now that you know it takes me three days to read a 220 page book, I can mention it yet again. David Finch in The Journal of Best Practices describes a performance review in which he is lauded by his boss. Adaptability.... great. Initiative... excellent. Achieving goals.... on target. 

Yet Dave realizes that these are the precise areas that his wife Kristin feels he falls short in. With dogged determination he sets up a meeting with her, perched on their duvet with a laptop open, spreadsheet at the ready.

"Let's do a husband performance review." She is reluctant to point out all his shortcomings, but he is insistent. Dave wants to improve, so he tells her to spit it out. 

She articulates the need for more empathy, and initiative in parenting their children. He needs to be more flexible when things don't go as planned. Somehow the impartiality of a document enables him to record information without reacting. Make that exploding. This is an agenda they are outlining, not a mincing of his character. It becomes a set of bullet points to strive for, and since he was so successful at work surely he could do as well at home. 

Scott Haltzman articulates a similar idea in his book Secrets of Happily Married Men. You too can own this book for less than the price you shelled out for coffee. One of the chapters suggests that husbands treat their marriage like a job. Most men can handle problems at work, overcome challenges and crash through goals. But at home they may feel like a flag in a hurricane, blown around and shredded. Crafting a strategic plan can be the deal maker. 

I am grateful to both authors for the windows they offer into the male mind. For me it has been a process not unlike learning another language. Which comes in handy if I want to navigate Manland.