Part 3
How He Acts

Central Park in New York doesn’t have a great reputation.

I’d heard about it for years and seen it on television and in the movies. It’s a background for crime dramas and sinister scenes in scary films. National news reports describe murders and attacks that take place there. I always pictured it as a place where you couldn’t walk without your life being in danger.

Earlier this week, I was in New York for a speaking engagement and staying about three blocks from Central Park. I decided to go to the park for a run one evening. I went online to see what people were saying about it in terms of safety. Most of what I read said that there were some areas of the park that were questionable, but mostly at night and off the main roads.

So I was a little nervous, even though it was still daylight outside. I entered the park cautiously, looking around constantly to make sure I wasn’t going to get in trouble.

That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. In the time I was there, I probably saw five hundred other runners. Horse-drawn carriages took other people on tours, and hundreds more people walked or played on the green, rolling hills and rock formations. It was incredible and amazing, one of those experiences I’ll never forget.

And I almost missed it because I had accepted an incomplete perspective.

That happens in relationships with men too. There are a ton of stereotypes the media has portrayed about men that are incomplete or untrue. “Men don’t have feelings” or “men don’t listen” are just a couple of the generalizations that many people have come to accept as true.

But that perspective can keep women from experiencing the best that a man has to offer. We need to expose those stereotypes and challenge them. We can learn what’s accurate about men and what comes from urban legends. We can find out why men really act the way they do, and what it really means.