I’ve polled a number of women friends of mine (both professional therapists and not) to find out the answers to three important questions about the differences between men and women in relationship. Here is the first question and the answers I got to it. A big thanks to my friends who were willing to participate in my unofficial survey. Parts 2 and 3 are coming soon.

1. What do you see as the three biggest problems men have in intimate relationships? What about the top three that women have?

My goal was to try to get better marketing information, but also to understand the issues that I work with from another perspective. I want to help men to understand what they are up against from the women they love, and how to better understand them and reach them.

For the first question, women answered communication several times as being one of the biggest problems that men have in relationships. They also reported that being vulnerable, being too analytical/thinking, honesty, letting go, and being afraid to show emotions for fear that their women will think that they are weak. Men, according to my friends, also want to fix everything instead of just validating.

As for the women themselves, women reported that the biggest problems women have in relationship include: nagging or repeating things to their man (which makes them not heard anymore), overly emotional, and impulsive reactions. Women also reported that their problems include being open and not afraid that they may scare their man away, creating an equal partnership and feeling misunderstood. Also, women reported that they try to force their partners into communicating instead of easing in to it. One of my friends talked about the idea of a “mythical mate,” a fantasy partner that women think will automatically read their minds without them needing to tell their man what they want and need.

Overall, some very interesting answers, both as a therapist and as a man in a relationship. I hope you can find some valuable ideas here, and maybe you see yourself in some of these answers.

We’ll look at questions 2 and 3 in future posts, so stay tuned.

Jason

This virtual anatomical model reveals just how stress affects your health. Interesting!

http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/health/Mind_Body_Health_Interactive_Stress_Tool.php

Have that sense of working too hard to make somebody else happy? Is that somebody your partner, girlfriend, or wife? It’s tough to decide on when you are at the point of working just a little too hard or two much to meet her expectations of you, as a boyfriend or husband.

Sure, there is work to any relationship. Ideally, you are able to meet as many of her needs as you can, and there will be some needs you simply cannot meet. But, are you feeling judged and criticized for underperforming? Does she complain that “you don’t love me?” or continue to remind you what you’re not doing for her? Do you numb out, or avoid hearing what she’s saying? Am I making any sense at all?

Deep listening is so important, as is a willingness to change and start to both understand and meet the needs that she is asking of you. It’s hard to listen when you feel defensive, and that happens when you feel criticised, belittled or generally upset. The difficulty lies in listening, because it’s probably true that you’re angry, disconnected, and otherwise unwilling or able to meet her needs and give her what she is looking for from you. The distance gets wider, and she may not realize that her words are pushing you further away from her, which is creating more of the original problem. The issues are snowballing.

So, good communication, listening attentively and deeply, and becoming crystal clear about what both people’s needs and feelings are (and how they can be met – e.g. through a hug, kind words, etc.) are critical elements of success in bridging the gap between the two of you. Ironically, its the verbal assaults, criticizing and name calling that creates more of the same problem.

A lot of the time, we lose valuable experiences that take place in the present moment because we are busy “living” our lives in our heads, either lost in the memories of the past, or fantasizing about the future, where life will be better. It’s difficult to stay planted in the present moment, because that is where our minds don’t want to stay.

Men tend to avoid the experience of their emotions and feelings by living in the past or the future, and have a difficult time dealing with the present moment. Some men avoid their present moment experience by staying in their heads all of the time, and “thinking too much.” Some just avoid the present moment by not having their experience of anger, of pain, of sadness, or of grief. The failure to attend to these crucial experiences means that we have to find surrogate places to be. 

Growing up, many of us learned to stuff our emotions or feelings, and started creating a life that avoided the pain of the present moment. It was too hard then, and it’s too hard now. We build lives on top of these individual experiences of pain, fear and sadness, and then lament when our problems are getting the best of us. We forget that we are the ones that created a lot of the problems that we experience, because it’s been too long and our problems have been embedded in our lives for as long as we can remember.

Learning to be in the present moment is truly living our lives, and not living in the false realities of the past and future. It is difficult for people to do this type of living, especially when there are many places inside of us that are too scary to revisit.

Meditation, yoga, therapy, and other vehicles of mindfulness are all ways to get back into the beauty of the present moment. Deep breathing is also a practice into accessing the present moment. 

Learning to have our feelings and experiences, and then communicating them to the ones we love is a form of acceptance of the present moment. We are truly living our lives when we do this.

A friend recently gave me a great idea. He thought I should post on the idea that men sometimes don’t know what to do or say when women get upset. He thought that men who do not consider themselves emotional have a hard time empathizing or dealing with women who are upset emotionally, especially if they are in a relationship with those women.

I can say two things about this phenomenon: practice deep listening, and don’t try to fix anything yet. Try to not be logical for once.

Men are notorious in their desire to fix a situation, and when this happens, deep listening cannot happen. We are fixers by nature, and this trait is good, when it comes to hunting big game, fixing a car engine, or making everyday decisions. It is a hinderance when it comes to connecting with the women in our life.

We run from, try to fix, avoid, lack empathy or do a thousand others things when the women in our lives get “emotional” because we are not in touch with those similar places within ourselves. The more we, as men, can get in touch with those emotional places (no, you won’t be crying or overly sensitive from now on), the quicker we will be able to connect and empathize with what women are experiencing emotionally.
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(from the New York Times, by Tara Parker Pope)

A year ago, I bought an elliptical trainer — a gym-quality machine that I felt certain would get a daily workout.

Today, my top-of-the-line exercise machine sits idle most of the time. But I’m not alone. Every year, consumers spend an estimated $4 billion on home treadmills, stationary bikes, Stairmasters and other equipment that ends up gathering dust. A Consumer Reports survey last year found that nearly 40 percent of those who buy home exercise machines say they use them less than they expected.
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The work that I do with men is very much grounded in the present moment. Most of the problems that we experience are byproducts of living in the past, in memories about how things used to be (for better or for worse) or in the future, where things look better than they do now. Happiness, change and personal and relationship success all lie in living in the present moment, and developing present-moment awareness about how to access the feelings and emotions that come up in that moment.

In working with men, the present moment is often difficult to experience. Men tend to hide their feelings, or not be in touch with them at all. Men I work with tend to have found residence in their heads, which makes their problems worse. There is an unconscious tendency to try to figure out or fix problems from the head, which doesn’t always seem to work. If it did work, we wouldn’t need therapy.

To experience the present moment, feelings can slowly surface and find the light they need to burn away. Fear, pain, anger, sadness – all want to run their natural courses, which in an organic sense is to process and to leave. But, because we learned poor coping skills (defense mechanisms) to deal with those very painful experiences, we do not have the experience of the present moment and keep those feelings frozen and stored away, where they don’t reach the light of day and melt away. 

Counseling with me is an experiential process, because I work from a framework called Gestalt Therapy. IT’s a little different than just talk therapy, because it is learning from experience in the present moment. Gestalt Therapy works with the present moment as it unfolds in the therapy transaction, often through experiments in the session. It is effective at helping clients “get out of their heads” and into their experience of living, where the pain resides and true transformation can be had.

As I do at the end of every year (and the beginning of every new year), I think about why I do this work in the first place. I ask myself, “How can I best serve the men in my community?” or “What is it that I think men need most in my community?” 

Counseling for men developed this past year after I did some soul searching, and figured out that to sustain a practice and myself over the long term in counseling, I needed to work with men because I enjoyed it so much. I found that a lot of the issues that I have worked through personally come up with men all the time. I wanted to dedicate my practice to working with guys who are struggling the same way I did in my past, and help them to find their voice and change their lives, whether it be to find a relationship that is good for them, to reduce stress in their lives, to find meaningful work, to access their emotions better or to have deeper and more intimate relationships with their partners, wives or girlfriends.

In some ways, I see that there are a lot of expectations on men to succeed in parts of their lives that they have not been able to be successful with, i.e. emotional intelligence and intimacy. I think that, compared to 50 years ago, the expectations of a mate have changed, and men are expected to do so much more. Just pick up any womens’ magazine and see what they are saying. Culture states that men are expected to be both the breadwinner and the heart opener. It’s hard to do both.
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