Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know

HOW MOTHERING THE MAN IN YOUR LIFE CAN DESTROY YOUR RELATIONSHIP

Acting out a mothering role with men might appear to have its rewards at first, but in reality, it will have some very devastating effects on your relationship.

1. Your man will end up resenting you and rebelling against you. In Chapter 1 we talked about the psychological need every little boy has to assert his independence from Mommy in order to define himself as a male and not a female. When you take on a mothering role with your man, it’s inevitable that your man will begin to resent you, and eventually he will rebel against you. He may not complain about your behavior; he may insist that he doesn’t want you to stop; but he will end up rebelling, because all boys have to break away from Mommy someday.

Karen, 52, came to me after she discovered her husband was having an affair with a 24-year-old secretary from his office. Karen couldn’t understand why her husband, Leonard, had strayed from the marriage. “He always seemed so content,” she explained as she sat in my office. “I know I spoiled him – he used to say that he hadn’t even gotten this kind of treatment from his own mother – but he insisted that he loved being pampered and coddled. Now he tells me he felt stifled, trapped in the relationship, and that he wants his freedom. He never complained for twenty-seven years. I just don’t understand what happened.”

When I talked with Leonard, my suspicions were confirmed – he felt he was trading in a mother for a lover by leaving his wife and choosing a younger woman. Even the words he used to describe his relationship with Karen – “trapped, stifled, longing for his freedom” – sound like those of a teenage boy who can’t wait to leave home and be on his own. Karen thought she was being a good wife by mothering Leonard, but in the end it drove him away.

2. Your man will end up feeling incompetent. When you continually treat a man as if he is incompetent, he begins to feel incompetent. The more incompetent he feels, the lower his self-esteem, and the more he will actually behave incompetently. This creates a vicious circle:

WHEN A MAN DOES NOT FEEL GOOD ABOUT HIMSELF, HE WILL BECOME LESS LOVING TO YOU

A man’s self-worth comes from his sense of competence. And when a man feels he is not doing a good job in any area of his life, it becomes very difficult for him to be loving toward himself or you. Emphasizing a man’s incompetence by treating him like a child is guaranteed to inhibit his ability to love you.

The other side of this is that the more incompetent your man appears to you, the more turned off to him you will become. Women are turned on by competence. So the more inept he seems, the less attractive he’ll be.

3. You will kill the passion in the relationship.

THE QUICKEST WAY TO KILL THE PASSION IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP IS TO MOTHER THE MAN YOU LOVE

The more you act like a man’s mother, the more he will treat you like his mother. But no man wants to sleep with his mother. The sexual taboo against feeling attracted to a female with mothering energy is so deeply rooted in most men that it will be impossible for your partner to continue to see you in an erotic, romantic way when you are constantly picking lint off of his clothes, reminding him to do his chores, and otherwise treating him like your son.

Of course, treating your man like a child will turn you off as well. How romantic can you feel at the end of the day when you see your man and think to yourself. He couldn’t find his socks, he lost his keys again, I had to call the plumber because he forgot? How excited can you get about someone who you’ve just finished treating like a three-year-old?

I believe that Mistake #1 is one of the primary causes for the lack of a satisfying sex life in many marriages. Being together for twenty years, having financial pressures, bringing up a family – these all contribute to the tension that can inhibit passion. But none of them are as destructive as the transformation of the husband and wife into a mother and her son.

THE SOLUTION: HOW TO STOP MOTHERING MEN

Here are some suggestions for transforming yourself from a mother into a lover with your man.

1. Stop doing things for your man that he should be doing for himself. Treating men like children is like an addiction, and like any addiction the only way to stop is to Stop. This means that when your husband asks you where his keys are, say “I don’t know,” and let him look for them himself. When he is ready to get dressed for a certain occasion, don’t suggest what clothes he should wear. When he leaves a pile of clothes lying on the floor, don’t pick them up for him.

If your man is used to your doing things for him, he is going to have to adjust to your new role. At first, it might be difficult. You may have to put up with his frustration as he learns to do things for himself that he hasn’t in years. And don’t be surprised if your life temporarily becomes a little more chaotic. You may be late for a party because he can’t find his keys. He may leave the house with his tie crooked. But when these things happen often enough, he’ll learn. He’ll remember how frustrated he was looking for his keys and will learn to put them in the same place every night. He’ll recall how many times he’s told his tie is crooked and will learn to check it in the mirror himself. In other words, he’ll grow up and learn to take care of himself.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the next time your husband asks you if you’ve seen his keys you should respond, “Find them yourself I’m not your mother! “And I don’t believe you should stop being loving, nurturing, and supportive to your partner. It simply means being more of a wife or mate, and less of a mommy.

2. Treat your man like a competent, reliable person. Don’t remind him of information he should remember. Don’t be his brain and his calendar for him. Act as if he is a competent adult who can be counted on. Remember, your man might have gotten lazy since you’ve been doing a lot of the scheduling for him; he may unconsciously rely on you to make sure he doesn’t forget important appointments or responsibilities. So when you stop mothering him, he may find himself missing meetings, forgetting to pay bills, or neglecting to take out the rubbish. If this happens, do not scold him or criticize him, just sympathize with his frustration, and go about your own business.

Let’s say your partner has a dentist appointment on a Thursday. Say good-bye to him Thursday morning as usual. On Thursday evening, he comes home and announces “I’m so mad at myself. Dr. Hopkins’s office called me at work and told me I had an appointment today. I totally forgot about it.” You respond by saying, “That’s a shame, darling. I’m sure you can reschedule.” After enough missed appointments and forgotten events, your partner will learn to keep better track of his own schedule.

3. Don’t speak to your partner in “mommy-talk.” Promise yourself that you’ll stop talking to your man as if he is a five-year-old. That means: No Scolding! It’s perfectly all right for you to let your partner know when you are upset or angry. But talk to him as one adult to another, not as an exasperated mother to her bad little boy.

What about “baby talk” in a relationship? I think some baby talk is natural, an intimate way we share our vulnerable selves with each other. If you and your partner speak in baby talk a lot of the time, however, especially in bed or during sex, then you’ve got a problem. It’s time to have a grown-up relationship.

4. Decide what responsibilities you want him to handle in the relationship, and don’t take over even when he makes a mistake. I know how difficult it’s going to be for many of you to do this. It means letting go of control and trusting things to work out all right in the end, even if they don’t happen as you would have liked them to. For instance, your husband says he will make reservations for dinner one evening, but he calls the restaurant too late in the day, and all the tables are booked. When he telephones you at six o’clock to say he couldn’t get reservations, you say, “That’s too bad. I’ll be ready at eight o’clock as planned. I’m sure you can find some place for us to go. See you then.” He’ll feel stupid for procrastinating, grateful that you didn’t berate him, and will remember this feeling the next time he plans to take you out for dinner.

Warning: You will be tempted to intervene when you see the situation falling apart. Your vacation is coming up, and you know your husband hasn’t made plane reservations yet. Or your boyfriend decides to make some lasagna, and you know he is putting in too much sauce.

DON’T GIVE IN TO THE TEMPTATION TO RESCUE HIM

Let him make his own mistakes, and live with the consequences. That’s the only way he will learn to do things differently next time.

HOW I STOPPED A MAN FROM “DRIVING” ME CRAZY

Having spent fifteen years of my adult lift mothering men, I consider myself, unfortunately, an expert on the subject, and want to share a story about breaking the mommy habit. I was in a relationship with a man who was chronically forgetful. He’d forget his appointments; he’d forget to return phone calls; he’d forget to mail in bills; he’d even forget where he was going when we were driving somewhere, and would miss the correct exit on the motorway. For two years, I took on the responsibility of being his brain, reminding him of what to do and where to go in his life. Whenever we’d drive somewhere, I’d never relax – I’d be on the lookout for each exit and appropriate turn, to make sure we got to our destination on time.

Finally, I got fed up with mothering him and decided that the only way he was going to learn to pay attention on the road was if I stopped doing it for him. One weekend we took a trip to a spa in southern California. We’d been there before and, of course, I knew the exact directions. We’d been driving for about an hour when we reached the signs that indicated that our turn-off was a few miles ahead. I glanced at my partner to see if he’d noticed, and felt my stomach tightening up. Not I warned myself. You promised you weren’t going to say anything. The closer we got to the exit, the more of a nervous wreck I became. And then we were at the exit, and my partner kept on driving. He’d missed it! I clenched my teeth tightly together to keep myself from screaming.

Time seemed to stand still as we drove ten miles, twenty miles, thirty miles past where we should have turned off. It was beginning to get dark. Suddenly he turned to me and said, “Does this area look familiar to you?”

“No,” I replied softly.

“I didn’t think it did,” he said. “Maybe I missed the turn-off.” He stopped at a petrol station and found out that, sure enough, he had just driven forty miles out of his way, making us late for our arrival at the spa. It took all my self-control not to say anything. As my partner turned the car around and headed back in the other direction, he looked at me sheepishly and said, “You knew I’d missed the exit, didn’t you?” I smiled at him; he smiled back. We both knew that he’d learned more of a lesson from driving forty miles in the middle of nowhere than he would have if I’d intervened and pointed out his mistake.

5. Make a list: “The Ways I Play Mommy …” Sit down and write out all of the ways you play Mommy in your relationships. Watch yourself over a few weeks, and add to the list whenever you catch yourself. If you’re really brave, ask your partner to suggest items that should go on the list! You may be surprised at how long your list turns out to be. The first step in changing your behavior is becoming aware of it.

6. Talk with the man in your life about the mommy/son games you play together, and work as a team to create a grown-up relationship. I suggest you give this book to the man in your life, so that he can understand you and himself better. Have some serious discussions about everything you’ve read in this chapter so far, and ask him for his input on the topic. Then make some agreements together, guidelines you each agree to follow that will help you create a grown-up relationship.

7. Be consistent. It’s essential to be consistent in following your new rules and avoiding the old mistakes. Stick to your commitments, no matter what the consequences. For instance, you agree not to clean up after your husband in his bathroom, and that he is responsible for taking his own underwear and towels into the laundry room. After one week you notice that there is a huge pile of clothing in the middle of his bathroom floor, and that he has no clean towels left on his shelf and no underwear in his drawer. Don’t touch that dirty pile of clothes! Wait until he complains that there are no clean towels, or that he has no underwear to put on, and remind him that all his towels and underwear are still on the floor where he left them. He may not be in the greatest mood, but he’ll get the message. If you give in for your own sense of sanity and orderliness, he’ll never take your new commitment seriously, and won’t stick to his.

Remember, it’s not easy to break the mothering habit, but when you do, you will feel like more of a woman, and your partner will look and feel like more of a man.

MISTAKE 2

Women Sacrifice Who They Are and Put Themselves Second in Importance to the Man They love

You’ve just spent several hours preparing a special dinner for your partner, fillet of sole almondine. You’re about to bring the two plates to the table when you realize that one of the portions of fish is larger than the other. Assuming you and your mate have equal appetites, will you give him the bigger portion, or keep it for yourself?

Most women to whom I pose this question sheepishly admit that they wouldn’t even have to give this dilemma much thought – of course they’d give the bigger portion to the man, because they are so used to putting the man first and themselves second. In fact, many women I interviewed said they’d actually feel guilty taking the larger piece of fish; they used words like selfish, stingy, unloving.

Mistake #2 has to do with how we as women sacrifice who we are, and put ourselves second in importance to the men in our lives. How do we do this?

1. We give up our own interests, hobbies, and activities. Sara, 31, used to be very involved in studying and practicing meditation and yoga. She found it helped her relax, and kept her feeling healthy. Then she met Bill, 36, a computer consultant, who had a cynical and skeptical attitude toward “that Eastern stuff,” as he called it. In order to avoid conflict, she stopped going to her yoga retreats one weekend a month, and found she was skipping more and more of her regular meditations, until she stopped entirely. When asked why she gave up these interests, she answered, “I guess I’m in a different phase of my life now. I’ve kind of outgrown those things.”

A year and a half later, Sara and Bill broke up. Within two weeks, Sara finds herself beginning to meditate again. “I can’t believe how much I missed this,” she remarked.

Emily has always loved to dance. She took ballet and jazz when she was growing up, and enjoyed going dancing on the weekends with friends. Dancing makes her feel alive, graceful, and free. When Emily was 29 she met Andrew, 31. They began dating, fell in love, and got married two years later. I recently bumped into Emily at a department store, and after asking her how she and Andrew were doing, I mentioned dancing. Emily looked uncomfortable and replied, “Well, I don’t do much dancing anymore.” When I asked her why, she explained: “You see, Andrew has never really liked dancing. He’s always felt like a klutz, and in the beginning I would drag him to clubs with me, but he’d just sit there all night and refuse to get up on the dance floor. It wasn’t fun seeing him sulk, so we stopped going. He encouraged me to go dancing without him, not to sacrifice on his account. I went once or twice with some friends, but I felt guilty leaving him home alone. I guess I miss dancing, but it’s no big deal, really.”

These women are doing what many of us do – giving up our own interests and hobbies because they are not important to the man in our life. We don’t even realize that we are making these sacrifices. We convince ourselves that we aren’t really missing anything, that it doesn’t matter. But it does. Often we become aware that we have made our own choices and activities second best only after the relationship has ended, and we find ourselves taking up those interests again. Then we remember how much we used to enjoy meditating, or dancing, or gardening, or cycling, or whatever it is that we gave up because the man in our life wasn’t particularly interested in it.

2. We give up friends or family members our partner doesn’t approve of. JoAnne, 26, was a beautician, who met her boyfriend, Lawrence, a 50-year-old antique dealer, on a blind date. JoAnne was bubbly, clever, and vivacious, and even though she’d never gone to college, she had good common sense and was doing well. Lawrence had graduated with honors from an East Coast Ivy League university, and considered himself an intellectual. The problems between them began the first time JoAnne took Lawrence to a friend’s birthday party. JoAnne was having a wonderful time until she looked over and saw Lawrence sitting by himself, “What’s wrong, honey?” she asked.

“I don’t really feel comfortable here,” Lawrence answered with a scowl. “I really have nothing in common with these friends of yours.”

On the way home in the car, JoAnne and Lawrence argued about the party. “I hate you thinking my friends aren’t good enough for you,” JoAnne yelled. “So what if they didn’t go to college – they’re really good people.”

“Look, if you want to spend time with them, that’s your business,” Lawrence replied. “Just don’t expect me to participate.”

JoAnne was furious at Lawrence for his superior attitude, but she secretly wondered if he was right, if her friends weren’t good enough for her. She was afraid of what would happen if she continued to see them. Would Lawrence break up with her? Over the next few months she began to spend less and less time with her old friends, until she stopped seeing them entirely. She felt lonely – but after all, she had Lawrence.

Jackie’s parents had never approved of Mike when Jackie dated him in college, and they were even more upset when the couple decided to move in together. Mike was a heavy drinker, and even though he claimed he could stop any time he wanted to, he never seemed to want to. Jackie loved Mike, and knew he loved her, but was afraid to really confront him about his drinking. Jackie had always been very close to her parents, since she was an only child, but all that began to change once she and Mike started living together. Each time Jackie would mention that she’d spoken to her mother or father, Mike would start complaining that Jackie was still depending too much on her parents, that she was acting like a little girl, and that she needed to break away from them and be her own person. Jackie loved her parents, but she didn’t want to lose Mike, so she began to taper off her phone calls and visits with them, until she hardly had any contact with them at all. Mike told Jackie that he was proud of her for being so “strong.” But Jackie drives by her parents’ house every week, parks the car across the street, and cries.

If I asked you, “Would you reject a friend or family member if a man asked you to?” you’d probably answer with a resounding “No Way!” And yet many women do just that. They turn their backs on people who are important to them rather than risk the loss of a man’s love.

Why do some men try to separate you from people who care about you?

MEN WHO ARE INSECURE WITHIN THEMSELVES WILL TRY TO CUT YOU OFF FROM YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEMS

There are men who need to feel they have total control over their partner, who are frightened of being controlled themselves. One of their tactics for exerting that power over you might be to cut you off from those people and groups who love and support you – your family, your friends, your church or spiritual group. This can have two results.

1 You become more dependent on the man for love, since you’re getting less of it from other sources.

2 Your relationship becomes isolated from the scrutiny of the people who love you, thereby protecting your partner from possible criticism and negative feedback about his treatment of you.

3. We become “emotional chameleons,” walking into the relationship like a blank slate, and becoming whatever the man wants us to be. One of the most common ways women put themselves second is by being willing to sacrifice who they are, and become whatever their man wants them to be. I call this being an “emotional chameleon,” willing to change yourself, your looks, your behavior, and even your beliefs in order to fit your man’s image of his ideal woman. I’ll be the woman of his dreams, we decide, and we proceed to mold ourselves into someone else’s picture of what is lovable.

Here’s a true and sad story about how one woman sacrificed her entire personality for a man. Janice, a 32-year-old singer, walked into my office full of bitterness and rage. She’d just ended a three-year relationship with Tony, a telephone repairman. “Do you know what I did every weekend for three years?” she asked me. “I went to wrestling matches. Not to a movie, or the theater, but to goddamn wrestling matches. And when we were home, what do you think we watched on TV? Wrestling. I knew every wrestler. I knew who hated whom, I knew all the moves.”

“I don’t understand,” I replied. “You still haven’t told me what the problem was.”

Janice looked at me with daggers in her eyes and growled, “I hate wrestling! In fact, I hate sports. But Tony loved it, and whatever Tony wanted, I did. I became a wrestling groupie just to please him. I even convinced myself that I liked it. I thought of it as a love sacrifice.’ Now, whenever I think about it even for a second, I want to throw up. I am so pissed off at myself for being such an idiot.”

Janice had walked into her relationship with Tony a blank slate, willing to alter her personality in exchange for love. Living in Los Angeles, I often meet women who are making this unfortunate mistake in extreme ways, to the point of altering their physical appearance with plastic surgery because the man they’re involved with wants them to look different. I’ve counseled dozens of women who were “instructed” by their men to have their breasts enlarged or their backsides lifted, went ahead with the surgery, and are now dealing with their feelings of rage and humiliation.

4. We give up our own dreams, in order to help a man make his dreams come true. The wife who drops out of school to support her husband while he becomes a doctor, and realizes, fifteen years later, that she forgot about her own dreams of teaching retarded children …

The woman who quits her job in a major corporation to help her boyfriend with the bookkeeping for his import business, only to realize when they break up three years later that she did it for him and not for herself, and that now she has nothing to show for it…

I’m sure that if you haven’t done this yourself, you know a woman who has. It’s so sad that as women we are so willing to give up own dreams and adopt those of the man we love.