Men Are So Selfish: True or False?

Let's imagine that you are a woman with a very successful career in Retail.  Your husband is successful in his Construction career, and he has a higher salary than you.  He pays most of the bills for the household.  One day, you checked your joint checking account and you have $100 less than you had in the account yesterday which was $5,000.  The next day, you checked the joint savings account, and you thought you had $2,525.32 left; there's only $2.00 in the account.  Whoa!  That is a definite shock to the system.  Everyday, you notice funds being taken out of your accounts that you never used.  So now you decided to ask your husband about the drastic amount of money that is now withdrawn day after.  He says to you with a calm voice, "Don't worry about it.  I'll take care of it."  HE'LL TAKE CARE OF IT?  Why is this going on?  Then you get laid off from a job that you've had for 20 years.  You think to yourself, "At least my husband has a good job."

Okay, maybe you like to stay positive.  You want to trust that your husband will have everything under control, but when you ask him one last time about the diminishing funds, he finally breaks down to tell you that he lost his job…SIX MONTHS AGO!  This is a conversation that should have happened six months ago and not after the evaporating money.  Did pride keep her husband from being honest?  Was it selfishness?  Maybe he felt that you couldn’t handle it because he’s supposed to be the provider of the family.  It is hard sometimes when you have to tell the truth.  No one likes to hear harsh truth, but once the other party is aware of your situation, you can figure out a solution.

To some women, it would appear that this husband was being selfish for keeping his wife out of the loop.  After all, she did lose her job and hoped her husband could pick up the slack.  If she knew he had lost his job six month ago, it is possible that she could have possibly helped her husband find a new job or even cut back on spending.  Either way, he should have just told her the truth.  Would that have helped his wife to know the truth?  Is her husband selfish or was he protecting her?  Pride is definitely a factor in this situation.

Women like to be told the truth even if it hurts.  Since her husband wasn't honest with her this left several unanswered questions:  was he cheating on her, was he gambling, did he get involved with illegal business.  When our men don't tell us the truth it’s unfathomable.  With both of them out of work who is going to step up and handle matters?  This should have been worked out six months ago, but it is never too late to fix a situation such as this one.   

Are men really selfish?  Sometimes men seem selfish because they keep from us that which we feel we need to know.  The question is, “Do we really need to know everything?”  The situation above was an unfortunate scenario that happens all the time, and the husband should have informed his wife about what was going on; however, there are situations that are a lot worse and a lot more detrimental.  Men probably don’t tell us everything because they think we’ll make their problems much worse.  Men like to be in charge of handling their own complications.  Women, by nature, are emotional and are nurturers.  Of course, we are going to want to fix the problem.  Some men prefer that their women leave most problems alone only to let them handle it.  In this case, men shouldn’t appear selfish.  This would make him a protector.  The husband above didn’t tell his wife because she would have panicked and he would have felt worse.  Keeping secrets wasn’t good either though.  Well, we should understand that sometimes protecting can hurt and being selfish hurts as well.  Keeping secrets can be looked at as selfish so instead of omitting what needs to be addressed, just tell the person what they need to know.