For some men, anything with a powerful engine is just about the most enthralling thing they could imagine. While most women don’t understand the attraction, if your husband has emotionally with drawn from your relationship in order to direct his focus toward a vehicle, you are not alone. While men often find the female mind and emotional intimacy perplexing, engines make more tangible, concrete sense. Working on a car, truck, or boat has long served as a respite for men under emotional stress.
It’s a puzzle they can solve. As foolish as you may find the attraction, you will need to learn to respect it for its benefits before you confront your husband about the problems his new focus has created. The relief, calm, and clarity he most likely is drawn to in his mechanic work are clearly providing him something that is helping him cope with stress. Learn to respect what this new challenge has given him so you don’t begin your discussion with an accusation. He will likely feel personally threatened if you attack something that brings him so much enjoyment and comfort. Be ready to hear what he has been getting from his distraction so you can better understand why he feels he can’t be emotionally present in your marriage.
Helping Him Kick the Habit
Your husband will have his own personal reasons for being drawn to a mechanical distraction. Likely, he is drawn to vehicles as a distraction because they present a puzzle that can be solved with learning and physical effort. The trial and error, diagnosis, and delicate handiwork that working on an engine require appeals to mechanic-minded men on many levels. It moves them from the abstract and subjective world of a complex relationship to the concrete and objective world of mechanics. An engine has certain parts that will always work the same way. Marriage is more
intricate than that. You cannot just lift up the hood and listen to gauge the problem at hand.
Understanding what is behind the attraction to your husband’s distraction will enable you to begin the process of getting to the source of your marital problems and start working toward a solution. If he is drawn by the easy-to-solve puzzle aspect of vehicles, he is likely feeling that he can never solve the riddles that come up in marriage. Many men are so confused by how and why women behave the way they do that they turn to easier-to solve problems for relief.
Adapted from “THE OTHER WOMAN” by Dr. Godwin Ude.