The Simple Truth About Men
Filed under: Communication, Conflict, Dating, Emotions, Female Point of View, Gender Differences, Male Point of View, Relationship Patterns
Did you ever wonder why so many women have the very same complaints about men? There’s a reason, and it’s probably not what you’re thinking!
Most of us have been terribly misinformed about men. In fact, we’ve been lied to, and we don’t even realize it. I’m on a mission to change that – to help women learn what I’ve learned in my own relationships, through many years of focused study, and in working with distressed couples in my private practice in Southern California.
Over the years, I’ve heard women complain over and over again about one of the biggest challenges they face in their relationships with men: the lack of communication. Most women work very hard to create a loving home and/or environment, but the men they love often don’t respond to them the way they’d like. Whether it’s trying to get a man to listen or getting him to talk, failed attempts to communicate with him may leave you feeling …
- abandoned
- blown off
- dismissed
- frustrated
- isolated
- lonely
- pushed away
- rejected
- shut out
- undesirable
- unloved
- unwanted
Even so, women are no quitters! They keep trying and trying – to give and to get attention – but their partners frequently withdraw more and more with each attempt to break through the wall. Their men offer monosyllabic responses at best, and anger at worst.
For women, communication is everything. In fact, women thrive on conversation. Is it any wonder we want to have real, meaningful conversations with the men we love? We want to share our secrets and our hopes and dreams, as well as the intimate and emotional details of our day with those who are closest to us. When something’s bothering us, we want to talk about it. We don’t necessarily want it fixed, but we NEED to talk about it.
Why don’t men seem to get that? It’s particularly puzzling when you realize that men need many of the very same things women do when it comes to intimate communication. In fact, Dr. John Gottman’s marital research over the past three decades clearly shows us that both men and women need to get a positive response – a response that says “tell me more” – from their mate about 86% of the time.
So what can we do? In reading the book Why Won’t He Talk to Me, you’ll learn how to greatly increase your chances of getting the response you need from him. Each chapter contains questions and exercises that will help you evaluate your own relationship, as well as specific exercises you can do to put the principles into practice right now!
Click to read Why Won’t He Talk to Me online now.
Why did God give us feelings?
Imagine you are going for a walk along the beach. The gentle breeze is soothing to your soul, and the warm sand feels amazing under your bare feet. You wander down to the water’s edge and lose yourself completely as you watch the waves lapping at the shore.
You’re mesmerized by the flight of the seagulls, suspended in mid-air as though they were held in place by an invisible string. Off in the distance you see a lone surfer paddling his way toward the few waves that are beginning to appear not far from the horizon.
Suddenly, you feel a sharp pain in your foot and something warm and wet trickling down your ankle. But you don’t want to ruin the experience of the moment, so you try to ignore it. You don’t even look down. You just turn your foot on its side, which seems to lessen the pain a bit, and continue walking toward the pier.
You hobble up the concrete steps and along the wooden planks above the waves, heading toward your favorite restaurant, where your best friend is waiting for you. Your friend notices the grim look on your face and asks what’s wrong.
“I don’t know what it is. I was enjoying this great walk on the beach, but few minutes ago my back started hurting. Guess I’m just under a lot of stress. Maybe I need a massage.”
Had you paid immediate attention to to the painful sensation, you would have looked down to see that you’d stumbled over a broken bottle that cut a deep gash on the inside of your foot and ankle. You’d have sought out some sort of medical care – first aid – to address the problem and make sure that your wound had the best chance of being properly healed.
However, in wanting to focus only on the pleasant, you’ve ignored – denied – missed out on some critically important information. In the weeks and months ahead, you will continue to wonder about your back pain and fail to take care of the real issue of the gash in your foot. Which, by the way, would have been a rather straightforward healing process.
Our emotions are not all that different from our physical feelings. For more information, get instant access to my new eCourse now @ “Getting” Emotional.
A Brief Lesson in Empathy
Filed under: Communication, Emotions, Female Point of View, Male Point of View
Q & A: Why Don’t I Ask for Help?
Question: Hi. This is Daniel. Why do men, including myself, continue time after time to take any situation into their own hands and try to solve problems through trial and error and, after failing, then we get emotional and frustrated?
Answer: Thanks for your question, Daniel. It’s an important one! I’ll start with an illustration:
Have you ever watched kids playing in the sand at the beach? Little Annie is having fun with her favorite pail and shovel while her mother watches from a few feet away. Another child, about Annie’s age, comes along and watches for a few moments, then grabs Annie’s shovel. Her mother immediately takes action! She retrieves the toy and promptly returns it to her daughter, comforting her little girl with a hug and scolding the other child as she does so.
What did Annie learn? She learned that others will be there to help her, to take care of her. She feels valued, though she won’t be able to express it quite that way. She feels secure.
A few yards away on the same the beach, little Tommy is building a sandcastle while his mother is reading a book nearby. Another child, about Tommy’s age, comes along and watches for a few moments, then tromps on Tommy’s castle, smashing it flat and destroying his work in a matter of seconds. Tommy’s mother turns her attention toward her son, but she doesn’t move. Tommy starts to whimper and immediately looks toward his mom, but she makes sure he doesn’t notice she’s watching. She waits. The other child walks away, and Tommy again looks toward his mom. She has already turned her focus back to her reading. So Tommy goes back to rebuilding his castle.
What did Tommy learn? No one is going to help you. You feelings don’t matter. You have to figure stuff out on your own.
Now repeat those themes over and over for 10 or 20 years. In what ways do women and men respond differently to problems?
Generally speaking, women turn to others to help them process and understand life’s difficulites. They want to be comforted and understood, and they believe they will be able to find the help they need…or at least that they have the right to ask for it.
Men, on the other hand, have be taught (socialized) that they must figure things out on their own. The thought of asking for help feels weak and unmanly.
Even so, men are not omnipotent (all powerful). They cannot solve everything on their own. They’re human, and they have feelings: strong feelings they frequently have to bottle up. They handle the difficulty for a while, but when it doesn’t get resolved, the emotional pressure reaches explosion level. Then others shame them and tell them they have “anger issues.” Who wouldn’t? They’re trapped: Don’t ask for help. Don’t get emotional. Don’t be weak.
It’s a tough row to hoe.
Do You Speak English?
Filed under: Communication, Conflict, Emotions, Female Point of View, Gender Differences, Male Point of View, Relationship Patterns
Are you an “I Love Lucy” fan? If so, you probably remember the episode where Ricky’s friends come all the way from Cuba to see him. Of course, he’s not home when they arrive. Lucy tries to make them feel at home, only to discover they “don’ a speeka” English. So she talks s-l-o-w-e-r and LOUDER. But it’s still English.
If you’re having trouble getting a response from the man you love, you may be like Lucy. Saying the same thing, over and over, louder and louder. This strategy never works for two reasons.
First, guys shut down pretty quickly when they’re overwhelmed. It may look to you like he doesn’t care, but he’s really just trying to stay afloat in a sea of emotions.
Second, once he’s shut down, he doesn’t hear your actual words, only your anger. To him, it’s criticism – an attack on him as a man – that he has no verbal power to defend against. So he just hangs on until the storm is over.
He’s quiet, not because he doesn’t care about you, but because he’s overwhelmed by it all and doesn’t know what else to do.
Intimacy in Marriage
Filed under: Emotions, Female Point of View, Male Point of View, Marriage, Marriage Ministries, Relationship Patterns
from the National Institute of Marriage
Q: While dating, he was open, sharing his feelings and relaxed with me all the time. He loved being with me. Now, 4 years into our marriage, there is 0 intimacy. He is dead towards me. He never opens up, doesn’t say but 4 or 5 sentences a day. I am drowning! I want the relationship we once had. I want the intimacy back in our marriage. What do I do?
A: When married couples are together in a state of openness, intimacy naturally occurs. In its most basic sense, intimacy is the experience of being close to your spouse and openly sharing anything either about yourself or something else with the confidence of being secure, loved and valued. This may or may not include words. It doesn’t necessarily require work or effort. The mistake many make—knowing they want to experience intimacy and that openness is required—is to focus on trying to be open or to create intimacy. Either focus makes getting to true intimacy harder than necessary. The easier approach to intimacy is to focus on creating a secure environment for yourself and for your spouse. When both of you feel secure, you will be naturally inclined to relax and be open. Then, intimacy will simply happen.
Here’s what I mean by creating a secure environment. When you have a state of the art security system built into a marriage, especially emotionally, it makes opening up significantly easier. When you and your spouse know that both of you are committed to creating a secure marriage you avoid things that would cause hurt in either of you, and you begin building a foundation for a great relationship. Ideally, your home should feel like the most secure place on earth.
In your quest to have the “best of the best” in your marriage, I want to encourage you to make creating security a top priority. Start this process by answering some basic questions: 0-10 (with ten being the most safe), how secure do you feel today to open up and share anything with your mate without the uneasiness of being criticized or judged? How have I made it insecure for my spouse? How have I built security of my marital environment? What do I do in response to my mate when I’m feeling insecure?
Would it be safe to say that your husband felt safe and secure with you while dating? Did he feel judged, looked down on, condemned by the words that he chose or the actions that he took? The intimacy you experienced early on was a result of security.
Focus on creating security with your spouse rather than intimacy.
The Scaffold of Relationship
Filed under: EFT, Emotions, Marriage, Relationship Patterns
Preparing for a seminar on “How to Connect in the Middle of a Fight”, I have been considering a couple of movies that might have good examples of Attachment issues. I am looking for brief segments that capture the essence of the movement of our attachment dance. Sometimes it is much easier to see the dance of relationship than it is to listen to someone describe it. Two movies came to mind, The Story of Us and Kramer vs. Kramer, both movies about a couple struggling with their marriage and the effect it has on their family. In Kramer vs. Kramer there is a wonderful presentation of a father and son bonding after the wife and mother leave. You can see the movement of an unattached and emotionally clueless husband and father learning to connect with his son who has been abandoned by his mother, and come to terms with his role in losing his wife. (If you are offended by a few expletives or nudity do not watch either movie but I hope you do watch them.)
Sue Johnson, in her book Hold Me Tight makes a compelling point that attachment needs are “absolute”, meaning fundamental to who we are and how we are designed. That is, our hardware won’t operate to its full potential, and is often damaged, without the software system of human bonding. “Attachment is the bottom line, the scaffold on which other elements (of a relationship like sex, caretaking, play, work, etc.) are built. Without secure, safe and bonded relationships, especially during childhood, but also in adulthood, we will not have fully satisfying personal relationships or develop into fully functioning human beings.
Dustin Hoffman, the father in Kramer vs. Kramer makes the journey with his son that Dr. Sue Johnson describes as necessary for creating such relationships: “To achieve a lasting loving bond, we have to be able to tune in to our deepest needs and longings and translate them into clear signals that help our lovers respond to us. We have to be able to accept love and to reciprocate. Above all, we have to recognize and accept the primal code of attachment rather than attempting to dismiss and bypass it. In many love relationships, attachment needs and fears are hidden agendas, directing the action but never being acknowledged. It is time to acknowledge these agendas so that we can actively shape the love we so badly need. ”
Like many of us, Dustin Hoffman’s character has very little idea of his significant longings and needs but when thrust into caring for his son he chooses to care. He accepts “the primal code of attachment” and does not dismiss or run from it. Refusing to abandon his son, he learns what love is and how to love. There is a remarkable scene where his son falls off a jungle gym and busts his face. His father was attuned to the danger, tried to prevent it and then runs with his son in his arms to the emergency room, refusing to leave him during his treatment. Contrast these scenes with earlier ones of his hapless attempts to care for his son. He becomes a likable, compassionate human being who is there for his son. It is a journey and transformation we all must make to become fully human.
Many of us, particularly men, might question Mr. Kramer’s manhood or challenge how important all this really is. His boss certainly does. He is an example of dismissing the basic need of relationship; he is attached to his career. Learning to acknowledge our attachment needs and fears in an open and responsive manner is not emotional sentimentalism. It is rather recognizing that we need the basic scaffold in place in order to build an enduring structure. Without the basic structure of knowing ourselves and facing our fears, being able to communicate and ask for what we need, and being vulnerable enough to receive what we need, we will continue to experience disappointment and failure in our intimate and meaningful relationships. In other words, we will continue to experience disappointment and dissatisfaction with life.
There are many examples that I can give of when I “dismissed and bypassed” my basic need for close, safe, and bonded relationship. I put many other things first, like success, career, sensual enjoyment, demanding my own way, or preferring to be alone. Like Mr. Kramer, my children have taught me to pay attention to building the scaffold of relationship for enduring and rewarding attachments. There is nothing more enduring, more powerful, than an attached relationship. It is something that we all hunger for and what we commonly name love. Do you know your hunger or do you dismiss or deny it?
The Truth About Relationships
Filed under: Biblical Principles, Counseling, Dating, EFT, Emotions, Engaged, Marriage, Relationship Patterns
I’m amazed at the effectiveness of pop psychology. For years we’ve been told that people need to be complete in themselves (i.e., independent) before they can find a meaningful relationship. It reminds me of what my son said to me when he was a teenager looking for his first part-time job:
Mom, they all want to hire someone “with experience.” How can I get “experience” if no one will hire me?
As Christians, we do that, too. It’s like trying to get it all together before we come to God for help, which, by the way, is a very unbiblical approach. How can he supply our needs if we deny that we have any?
In sum, our culture (both inside and outside the Church) tells us that we need to not need anything before our needs can be met. Does that sound as crazy to you as it does to me?
The truth is that we all need. It’s a big part of what makes us human and, therefore, not God. As a friend once put it, “Saying someone is ‘too needy’ is like saying they’re ‘too human’!”
The truth is we need relationships because we are needy people. We’re dependent whether we’re willing to admit it or not. It’s as certain as the Law of Gravity! Even if you don’t buy the whole “gravity thing,” every time you leap into the air, you will still end up on the ground!
Like gravity, our neediness is part of our God-given human nature. We need, and we must depend on others (God and people) to meet our needs.
The question, then, becomes whether we have learned to be “effectively dependent” or to be “ineffectively dependent” on one another. In our upcoming posts, we’ll be exploring the varied ways we are “ineffectively dependent” on one another.
Sarah & Tim
Filed under: Conflict, EFT, Emotions, Marriage, Relationship Patterns
“Sarah’s message is urgent but Tim doesn’t get it. He finds her “too emotional.” But that is the point. We are never more emotional than when our primary love relationship is threatened. Sarah desperately needs to reconnect with Tim. Tim is desperately afraid that he has lost that intimacy with Sarah — connection is vital to him as well. But his need for connection is masked by talk of compromise and growing up. He tries to dismiss Sarah’s concerns to keep everything “calm and on track.” Can they begin to emotionally “hear” each other again? Can they be tuned in once more? ….” (Hold Me Tight, Johnson, 2008, p. 41)
Why do marriages fail?
Filed under: Conflict, Counseling, Divorce, EFT, Emotions, Marriage
The following quote is from Hold Me Tight:
“When marriages fail, it is not increasing conflict that is the cause. It is decreasing affection and emotional responsiveness, according to a landmark study by Ted Huston of the University of Texas. Indeed, the lack of emotional responsiveness rather than the level of conflict is the best predictor of how solid a marriage will be five years into it. The demise of marriages begins with a growing absence of responsive intimate interactions. The conflict comes later.” (Johnson, 2008, p. 38)
If you live in Southern California and would like more help reconnecting with your partner, please click here.
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