"They Only Want One Thing" and Other Lies We've Been Told About Boys
I have boys—a house full of them.
I'm married to a mountain man of a husband who oozes testosterone and is super proud of his facial hair. Together we have three sons. In the delivery room it was like the doctors had this sentence on repeat . . .
"It's a boy!"
"It's a boy!"
"It's a boy!"
Once you start adding in the boy cows (they're called bulls), male sheep (rams) and goats (bucks) and our furry Goldendoodle Marley, boys rule my world at a ratio of about 10:1.
I'm telling you all of that because when you swim in a sea of boys every day, you learn a thing or two about them. In particular, I've noticed that a lot of the things I've been told all my life about guys simply aren't true. Or at least they are not true of every guy all the time. I admit that my sons are still pretty little, very much in the "snips and snails and puppy dog tails" stage of life, but I often get glimpses of the young men they are becoming. I want people to see them for who they really are, and not assume they know what they are like based on what they've been told about all guys. So, for my brood of boys and every other guy on the planet, here are five lies we've been told about guys.
1. Guys Just Want "One Thing"
Let's just cut to the chase. This line implies that the primary thing on every guy's mind is sex. Maybe you've heard the claim that guys think about sex every seven seconds. (For the record, that's 8,000 times a day!) The truth is, that claim, though widely circulated, is not backed up by research. It's an urban legend, just like the abominable snowman or Loch Ness Monster.
While it's true that the guys in your world may be thinking about sex, I doubt that's the only thing on their mind.
86% of teen boys hope to get in to college or trade school after high school.
66% of them are working toward scholarships to pay for college.
55.5% of high school boys play a sport.
Half of them volunteer in some capacity.
God has given guys brains that can think bigger thoughts beyond sex. After all, it was a guy who invented the theory of relativity (Einstein), walked on the moon (Neil Armstrong), and created the iPhone (Steve Jobs). It's time we all acknowledge that the male mind is capable of so much more than just thinking about sex every seven seconds.
2. Guys Are Unfeeling Robots (Or Simple Caveman)
Do you remember these commercials made famous for the line "So simple, even a Caveman can do it?"
If you pay attention to the way our culture talks about guys, you'll notice a similar theme . . . "So simple, even a guy can do it." From commercials, to movies, to music, to the way we tend to talk about guys among other women, the message that is often communicated is that guys have the evolutionary brain of an ape and a heart the size of a shriveled peanut.
While it's true that in general girls are more emotional than boys, that doesn't mean that guys are unfeeling or that their feelings are overly simple.
Let's look at a specific example in Scripture, King David.
King David was a manly man for sure. He killed lions and bears (oh, my!). He cut off the head of Goliath. He was known everywhere as a fearless and effective warrior. And yet, David displayed a range of emotions. He felt:
