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What Women Want Men To Know
For Melissa, as for many women, love is a constant theme in her awareness. It’s the biggest piece of the pie of her consciousness. That doesn’t mean she isn’t focused on her job, or on other areas of her life – actually, she has a very busy schedule and a demanding career. It just means that when she is in an intimate relationship, she sees the world through the lens of love. It’s as if she is wearing a special pair of glasses whose prescription is her love for Joseph, and her experience of life is perceived through those love glasses. A news story on TV isn’t just a news story – it becomes something she can share with her sweetheart. A song on the radio isn’t just a song – it evokes memories and special emotions that remind her of her man. Raspberries aren’t just raspberries – they are the fruit that her partner loves.
Men: Please know that this process is so natural to a woman, so much a part of her nature, that she isn’t even aware that it’s going on. In fact, when Melissa read her own Thought Diary, she herself was surprised at how often she was thinking about Joseph. Normally, these thoughts about him just float in and out of her awareness. They’re just a part of how she is when she’s involved in a relationship, a reflection of how, like so many women, she puts love first.
HOW MEN AND WOMEN LOVE DIFFERENTLY
After years of research and personal experience, I’ve concluded that love is experienced very differently by men and by women:
For most women, love is nonstop reality, a consistent awareness that never quite disappears even when we are working or performing tasks that seem to have nothing to do with love. For most men, on the other hand, the experience of love is much more compartmentalized: It is an appointment men make with a part of themselves.
Women don’t have to shift into a loving awareness – they are in it most of the time, whether it’s being expressed or not. On the contrary, most men do have to consciously choose to make a shift into love mode.
Let’s go back for a minute to Brian, my friend who thought his new girlfriend must have psychological problems. This difference we’ve been examining between men and women explains why to Brian and probably to most men, a woman’s focus on him may seem excessive. Brian can’t imagine himself focusing on the relationship as much as Lori does. If he did that, he’d have to block out the rest of his life and consciously concentrate on her. To him, this would feel unbalanced, even obsessive. So he incorrectly assumes that if this is how Lori feels about him, she must be making a huge effort to love him in this manner, and therefore, she must be unbalanced and obsessive.
Many men make this same error in judgment – they see a woman putting love first, and have a hard time relating to it. “If I was behaving that way or feeling that way,” they think to themselves, “it would mean that I didn’t have a life, that I was really needy and desperate.” Then they conclude that their partner must be needy, empty, and insecure to love that much or focus on them that consistently.
Women, however, know better. Lori isn’t making any effort at all. She’s in love, and focusing on Brian is as natural to her as breathing. She doesn’t even think about it – it just happens. It’s the same with Melissa – she isn’t trying to think about Joseph; she isn’t thinking about him because she has a problem, or no life of her own. She is thinking about him because that’s the way she loves as a woman.
The analogy of the Love Pie illustrates how men and women think about their relationship. Here’s a second analogy, one that illustrates how men and women Junction in relationships.
Imagine a man’s consciousness and a woman’s consciousness are like houses, with different rooms for the different areas our mind focuses on in our life – a “work” room; a “body room; a “recreation” room, etc. For most women, every room in the house of her consciousness is also a Love Room, even when it is dedicated to other functions. It’s as if all the space in the house of her consciousness is used for love. It’s a Love House!
For men, however, there is only one Love Room in the house of their mind. Therefore, if the man wants to put his focus on love and the relationship, he consciously has to leave the other rooms and go to his Love Room.
This analogy of the Love Room explains a phenomenon I’ve experienced so often in my own relationships, one I know other women have as well:
I’m with my partner, and I reach out to relate to him in a romantic way, but he doesn’t respond. I know he loves me, so I can’t understand why he seems a little distant. When I ask him if something is wrong, he invariably replies, “No, nothing’s wrong.” I begin to feel frustrated and uncomfortable, because I’m trying to connect with him in an emotional way, but he is not reciprocating.
What’s actually happening in this situation? I am in my Love House, which is full of Love Rooms, and I am relating to my mate in a loving, intimate way, only he is not in his Love Room! Maybe he’s in the Work Room of his mind, and is thinking about a project he needs to complete; maybe he’s in the Money Room of his mind, and is contemplating what to do about his investments; maybe he is in his Relaxing Room watching TV or surfing the Internet on his computer. Suddenly, there I am wanting to relate to him emotionally, which he translates as my wanting him to go to his Love Room, where he can be with me that way. But he doesn’t want to go to his Love Room – he’s busy in some other room of his consciousness.
Of course, if I don’t understand this concept of the Love Room, then I don’t realize that my partner is not available to me emotionally at that moment – it just feels as though he is somehow shutting me out. And here’s the most unfortunate part: Since my partner is not in his Love Room, my attempt to connect emotionally can feel to him as if I’m trying to control him, or tell him what to do.
So, when I say to my mate, “What’s wrong?” it probably feels as if I am actually saying: “Why aren’t you in your Love Room right now? Why can’t you just drop everything and go there so we can be romantic?” This explains the reactions women often get from men – ranging from amusement, mild annoyance, impatience, and irritation all the way up the scale to anger and shutting down – when we try to create an emotional or romantic moment out of the blue. We’re trying to love him; he feels like we’re trying to make him shift out of the state of awareness he is in and drag him into his Love Room!!
Recently my partner and I went on a brief vacation and had a delightful and romantic time. The morning of the day we were leaving, we felt so close, and commented on how wonderful the trip had been. A few hours later, we left for the airport to fly home. After we checked in for our flight, I noticed that my partner seemed to have become a little distant. He wasn’t responding to me in the same way as earlier in the day, and felt kind of far away.
“Is something wrong, darling?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. But something had changed and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I began to feel agitated and worried. What could be going on? I continued to ask him if he was all right during our first flight, and during our wait at the second airport for the connecting flight, and of course the more I tried to get him to talk, the farther and farther away he seemed to go. By the time we got home late that evening, things just felt awful.
The next day, everything was fine again. But I was still perplexed. What had happened during our trip home to create such an upset feeling between us?
Then, it dawned on me. When my mate and I were on vacation at the hotel, it was as if he spent the whole time in the Love Room of his consciousness. He had no work, no obligations, and gladly went to that part of himself where he could connect with me emotionally and romantically. Then we left for home, and without my realizing it, he left his Love Room and moved into his Traveling-on-a-Journey Room, in which he was focused on the logistics of dealing with taxis, airports, crowds, finding gates, etc.
I, too, was paying attention to the details of our trip and went to a more businesslike portion of my awareness. However, being a woman, I brought the Love Room consciousness with me. So there I was snuggling up to him while we waited for the plane, talking about romantic things we’d done on our vacation, trying to continue the same mood we’d shared during those few days, totally unaware that he had checked out of his Love Room hours before! No wonder I felt sort of abandoned and alone – he was no longer keeping me company in the Love Room. And no wonder he felt irritated – it appeared to him that I wasn’t acknowledging or approving of his choice to shift gears.
WHAT WOMEN WANT MEN TO KNOW:
When a woman tries to connect with you emotionally, she doesn’t realize you may not be in your Love Room.
WHAT MEN CAN DO:
When you notice your partner looking for you in your Love Room, and you’re not there at the moment, either make an attempt to meet her there, or gently let her know you are in a different mode.
When your woman comes knocking on the door of your Love Room, she is hoping to find you there. So when she discovers the room is empty, and you aren’t where you were, say, the hour before or the night before, she can become confused and hurt, and feel as if somehow, you’ve gone away. When you notice her looking at you sort of bewildered, and asking “What’s wrong?” remind yourself that it’s likely you’re not in your Love Room, but she’s in one of hers. She’s not trying to criticize you for where you are – she’s just trying to make a connection. (I’ll talk a lot more about this later in the book.)
Then, you have two choices:
1 You can make a quick visit to your Love Room, if that works for you, shifting into Love mode for a minute to give her a hug, or say something sweet.
2 You can let her know that you’re in a different room of your consciousness at the moment – thinking about work, concentrating on driving, trying to look something up on your computer, and that you’ll try to meet her in your Love Room a little later.
I’ve suggested this remedy to many couples, and they’ve all reported great results. One man told me recently that he and his wife developed a kind of verbal shorthand to communicate with each other about their emotional moods. When he notices her trying to connect with him emotionally, he will say “Honey, are you in your Love Room right now?” This way he can be sure of what her intention is in trying to get him to talk or be affectionate or whatever. When she answers, “Yes I am!” and he knows he’s not in that same mode, he sweetly replies, “Well, I’m not in my Love Room right now, but I appreciate you stopping by, and maybe I’ll catch you later!” That’s all she needs to hear in order to know that her husband appreciates her attempt to connect, and isn’t connecting the way she would like him to not because anything is wrong, but because he is occupied in another room of his consciousness.
In some of the chapters that follow, I’ll suggest really simple and effective techniques that can help take a man to his Love Room with very little effort.
WHY WOMEN PUT LOVE FIRST
Are you beginning to understand how differently men and women see themselves when it comes to love? This contrast has its source in the way we each value ourselves as a human being:
Women define and value themselves by how successfully they love and relate. Men define and value themselves by how successfully they achieve and accomplish.
How did men and women get to be this way? The reasons are sociological and cultural, going back thousands and thousands of years. Simply put, in more primitive times, a man’s value was measured by his ability to hunt and provide his family or group with food, his ability to defend himself and those he was responsible for, and his standing in the tribe or community. His success at these tasks literally meant life or death for him and those he loved. Still today, society judges men on how much money they make, how high up the ladder of success they’ve climbed, how successful they are at “hunting” as demonstrated by their house, their car, their clothing, etc.
A woman in primitive times, on the other hand, was valued for very different characteristics – her ability to take care of a man and their children, her ability to emotionally and sexually satisfy him and thereby keep him interested enough to continue providing for and protecting her, her ability to get along with him, his relatives, and the other members of the community. Her success at these tasks also had life-or-death consequences, for females who did not please men and win their favor had no way to take care of themselves and ultimately would perish.
Now it’s becoming clear why women put love first: We have done it for thousands of years. Our very survival depended on it. We have learned to maintain a continual awareness of the state of our love life, doing our best to make sure everything is okay, that there aren’t any problems we’re overlooking, that our partner is still happy with us. So when things are good in our relationship, we feel good about ourselves, and when they’re not, we feel unsettled and insecure.
This explains a secret all women know about ourselves: No matter how smoothly things are going in our professional life, or with our projects, hobbies, and interests, if there’s a problem in our intimate relationship, we’re miserable. We could be having a fantastic day at the office, but if things are bad at home, it ends up feeling like a bad day. It doesn’t even have to be a substantial problem – maybe we just had a little argument with our husband the night before – but that will be enough to make our heart ache all day long, in spite of whatever accomplishments we experience at work.
I will confess that I’ve experienced this time and time again in my own life. I could be having the most exciting day doing a TV show, promoting a new book, or giving a seminar to thousands of people, but if there’s some lack of harmony in my relationship with my partner, it’s very difficult for me to fully feel the joy of my achievements. Why? Because like many women, I define myself so strongly by the big part of my Love Pie – the content of my heart, and the state of love in my life. The truth is that all the applause or book sales or attention in the world can’t remove the sadness I feel when my mate and I aren’t as connected as I want to be.
Most men experience the opposite of this phenomenon: If things are wonderful with their love life, but they’re having a bad day at work, it is difficult for them to feel good. Why? Because men also tend to define themselves by the big part of their Love Pie – only in the case of men, it’s their achievements in their career, their accomplishments in the world, how well they think they’re measuring up to their image of who they think they should be.
One of the hardest lessons about love I have had to learn as a woman has to do with not misinterpreting a man’s behavior just because he doesn’t respond as I do. When a man doesn’t seem to want to give us as much time, attention, and focus as we think he should, our tendency is to assume that something is wrong. We think, “If I was behaving that way, it would mean that I was really angry with him, or that I didn’t care, or that he wasn’t that important to me.”
WHAT WOMEN WANT MEN TO KNOW:
Women sometimes assume that your lack of focus on the relationship means that you don’t love us or care as much as we do.
This is why we get upset or hurt when you don’t put us first – because we want to feel you are as committed to the relationship as we are, and that you value us as much as we value you.
I agree that, as women, we need to remember that men are different, and that they don’t always show their commitment to love in the same way we do. But you can help us out a lot, guys, first by understanding why we get so disappointed, concerned, or upset when it looks to us like you don’t care, or that you’re not taking us into account, or that you’re not valuing the relationship; and second by not making us feel wrong for our emotional reactions.
HOW TO APPLY THIS INFORMATION TO YOUR RELATIONSHIP AND WHY YOU SHOULD WANT TO
Men, I am going to be making this point over and over again throughout the book: Each time you refuse to understand why your mate is feeling upset about something, whether you realize it or not you end up causing or exacerbating the very behaviors and emotions you dislike in her! In other words, she may not start out feeling insecure – she’s just behaving in ways women do when they put love first – but your critical reaction to her behavior alarms her, and then she does begin feeling insecure.
In my years working with thousands of women, and in the research and interviews I did for the book, this information is one of the most essential things women wanted men to know.
WHAT WOMEN WANT MEN TO KNOW:
When you don’t make an effort to understand a little bit more about why women are the way they are, you can unwittingly contribute to the very behaviors in your partner that you can’t stand!
Remember the story I presented earlier about the woman whose husband didn’t call her from his out-of-town trip? He couldn’t understand why she was so upset and accused her of being insecure for needing to speak with him. Well, the reason she was upset was simple: She was imagining herself in her husband’s situation, and she knew that if she had been the one who was out of town, and didn’t call home for almost twenty-four hours, it would have meant that she was deliberately avoiding him, and that something was terribly wrong. She would have never not checked in with him, so she concluded that his not checking in with her meant he didn’t care about her feelings.
Her husband didn’t understand this principle. He just knew that she was upset, and this made him feel a bunch of feelings he didn’t want to feel: that he’d done something wrong; that he’d somehow upset her; that she had certain expectations of him that took away his sense of being independent and free; that suddenly there was a problem between them. Rather than taking the time to understand why she might have been upset, or expressing his remorse for worrying her, he blamed her for being upset in the first place. It was as if he was saying: “You’re upset because there is something wrong with you, and not because of anything I may have done or not done.”
His wife received this message loud and clear. What was the result? It only made her feel worse, and actually created the very insecurity he accused her of The more he invalidated her feelings and attributed them to her neediness rather than to her love, the more hurt and worried she became.
Guys, this story is a perfect illustration of why I believe you should be motivated to put what you’ve read here into practice. Wouldn’t it be great to know that, by handling conversations or situations with your mate just a little differently, you could prevent many of the upsets and stressful moments that you dread in your relationship? When you try some of what I suggest in the following section, you will be amazed to see how well the woman you love responds.
Here’s a summary of what I think are the most important points to remember about everything we’ve been discussing. Men, this is the section where you can really get the bottom-line information that will help you understand and get along better with your partner. And ladies, this is the part of the chapter you want to show to your husband or boyfriend even if he hasn’t read the rest!
# 1 What Women Do When We Put Love First:
We always want to invest time and energy into our relationship.
HOW MEN MISINTERPRET THIS:
WHAT WOMEN WANT MEN TO KNOW:
Women think of love as our job.
That is why we always want to work on it, because we feel if things are not going well in our relationship, it means that somehow we have failed to do our job properly.
So when we are trying to talk to you about “us” or get you to make plans to spend time together, or when we seem to be too “into” you, it’s NOT because we are insecure or needy; it’s NOT because we are trying to control you. It’s because we are trying to create the best relationship possible. It’s because we are trying to improve and develop our most valued investment. It’s because we are doing what our heart tells us is our job – to put love first.
WHAT WOMEN WOULD LIKE MEN TO DO:
#2 What Women Do When We Put Love First:
We always want to work on the relationship.
