In "Sans Rendez-vous", Monday, Catherine Blanc responds to Priscilla, who does not understand why when they are in the company of their group of friends, her boyfriend changes his attitude towards her.
A behavior that the sex therapist identifies as a form of rebellion aimed at not passing for a submissive man in the eyes of others.
Why does the behavior of some lovers change when they meet in public?
In Sans rendez-vous, Monday on Europe 1, the sexologist and psychoanalyst Catherine Blanc answers the question of a listener, who regrets that her companion has a different attitude with her when they meet with their group of friends.
She wonders why he expresses the need to boast at the risk of hurting her.
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Priscilla's question
When we're just the two of us, my boyfriend is super loving, caring and romantic.
But as soon as you're in a group with friends, they laugh at me all the time.
It was fun at first, but it gets offensive in the long run.
Why is he behaving like this?
Catherine Blanc's response
"It reminds me of the movie Grease you know where you have to play the tough guy, without emotion and make fun of the girls, then next to be a pretty heart in love. I think it's pretty classic, especially among young people. Because precisely because being romantic means witnessing your own emotions and this is perceived by boys, wrongly, of course, as being the expression of a weakness.
It is also the potential feeling that a woman has power over them.
Since she seduces them to the point of making them coo.
So, in fact, a lot of boys protect themselves from all this expression and suddenly need to bicker, to rush the girls a little.
And the latter often play it, moreover, they like quite masochistically, to put up with it because it's a way of understanding this ambivalence: they alone know that in reality, these boys fall for them.
Except that in the long run, it's not good at all.
It is not good for her, nor for him.
Because it suggests that the expression of love, romanticism or tenderness is something that is anti-virile.
While this is obviously a confusion, since being manly requires assertiveness, power, but that does not mean meanness or aggression in any way.
The expression of a feeling of weakness
A lot of young people operate this way, but I find what is quite worrying is that it says a lot about the idea that a relationship requires their submission, so they try to rebel in front of their pals.
But in reality, these are young men who later tend to be very little proactive and will not have a fair relationship with their partner.
They suggest the gallery that they hold the power, the shiny breastplate, but that says a lot about their feeling of weakness in their relationship with women.
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So it is very deleterious for the relationship and very deleterious for the companion in question.
It then only leads to a feeling of guilt which will make even more submission behind.
Besides, we can already see it in kindergarten: whoever loves well chastises well.
And already very small, someone interests me particularly, I can not face this flood of important emotions.
And as soon as the other is in front of me, to hide it, I'm going to say quite the opposite.
This is called the counter-investment of a repressed desire.
But at one point we grow up and we are responsible for what he says.
And what we damage, we do not damage it in the other, we already damage it at home.
So first, you have to tell him in private to stop because it's very upsetting.
And then warn him that if he continues to do it in front of his friends, Priscilla will answer him that his behavior is quite astonishing because it is diametrically different from what he lives with her on a daily basis. "