For the guys, I want to help communicate for you those things that are creating fighting and problems in your relationship. For the girls, I want to help you understand your guy, and what he is needing, as to give you an insider’s edge. Here goes.

1. Wants to be loved: You’re not too different from her, I know. This idea doesn’t run rampant in our culture, which says that we need sex, beer and football, which is crazy. I know that you need to know that you are loved, special and important to her, and that she communicates this to you.

2. To be admired: I know you want her to think highly of you. Remember why you tried out for your high school baseball team in the first place? Yes, it was to impress the girls. As adults, we still have that same need to impress our women. We want to know that she is admiring and swooning at us and our achievements and accomplishments, whether that’s being a good dad, employee or husband. So important.

3. Sex with you: Ladies, yes, he does want to have sex with you, and why should this even be on the list. A no-brainer. But, he also needs intimacy and affection from you, in the same way that you do, too. Guys are emotional beings, and don’t let any article form MSN or the like tell you that that is not the case.

4. Validation: A little different from admiration, validation is needed by guys to know that they are doing right by you. That’s it. I think that guys fear angering their partners, so a little verbal validation will help keep your relationship on track and show him when he’s doing a good job. Plus, it’s a great behavioral modification tool, so he’ll know when he does good and when he doesn’t do so good.

So, these are some things that guys do want, whether or not they are said. We’re not just limited to strictly what the media has to say about us. Believe it or not, we’re quite dynamic and emotional beings. And, no, this conversation doesn’t go past this blog post. I promise.

Check out this related post on why men cheat:

http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/blog/2008/09/30/why-men-cheat/

Jason

I was having a conversation with my business coach, Marco, and he was talking about this idea, which led me to seek out the article on (gasp!) Oprah.com. It’s interesting, and looks at the reasons behind why men cheat. It’s usually not about the cheating per se, but about a vacancy or an unmet need from within the relationship already. Do you find yourself fantasizing about cheating, or about other women in general? Would you suspect that there is something lacking in your relationship as it is?

See the article here:

http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/relationships/couples/20080827_tows_cheating

I’ve been working with this idea a lot in my sessions, about how men feel unfulfilled or not totally “in” the relationship, and then, on top of that, don’t have or haven’t learned the tools to get what they want or what’s lacking. Sometimes, infidelity or even “checking out” of the relationship has already happened, and then counseling becomes more like a clean up job.

If you suspect that there are some things in your relationship that you are not getting from your girl – sex, love, affection, validation, support, fun, intimacy, communication – maybe these are things that begin to create the problems that lead you to avoid, withdraw, or generally “check out” of your relationship. She probably knows that you’re doing this, and may or may not be saying it in words. Get some help now, before it’s too late for your relationship.

This post is the second in a series on dealing with how pornography affects marriages and relationships. Today’s post is an interview with Leanne Grant, Ph.D., who has worked with women who are affected by online pornography in their marriages.

Jason Fierstein: I am interested in learning about a woman’s perspective on the role of pornography in one’s relationship. Could you help me understand more about this?

Leanne Grant, Ph.D: Men don’t understand, from a woman’s perspective, to imagine their significant other getting off to pictures of the opposite sex and how threatening that feels to a woman. I imagine that any guy who comes home to find their wife or girlfriend to watching nude photos of men would feel threatened. For women, the message of “I’m not good enough” and “my guy is looking elsewhere to be stimulated” instead of with them is what comes up for women. Porn is physiologically stimulating, and is new and novel, so is attracted to the newness or the novelty. 

For women, it triggers a cycle about insecurities about their bodies. No woman can compete with an airbrushed image online. Visually, a woman couldn’t be that perfect, but women become obsessed about trying to become that image. Look at industries such as weight loss, plastic surgery, liposuction, Botox, exercise, cosmetics, and the list goes on and on.

Women get obsessed with trying to compete with the images that their men are watching online. Women think that “I’m not good enough,” and remember the point in their relationship that their man was really into them in the beginning.

Women see their guy looking at porn, and imagine to themselves that “he must be falling in love,” and “what if he is falling in love with somebody else.” The initial spark (during the honeymoon phase) can’t last over time. 

JF: So how does a couple break the cycle?

LG: Women need to talk about their own experience, and men need to talk about their own experiences together. Women are making it more severe in their own minds. 

The work becomes to create that spark again in your own relationship again. Women need to understand that that spark between them and their partner needs to be reignited over and over in a relationship. It doesn’t happen as spontaneously over the course of time as it did when you first start dating someone. It’s learning together how to bring that sense of excitement and novelty into your life.

JF: What happens if that doesn’t happen, though? It’s fairly common to see these things not happen, and for a relationship to get much worse?

LG: If it’s not happening, then you need to take the next step and get some outside help, because there might be something else getting in the way, such as feelings of hurt or resentment that impede your communication and intimacy. In the communication, it is important that you talk about how you feel – both you and your partner.

For example, as a woman, you need to admit that you feel scared to your partner when confronted with this. Men need to be able to communicate about why they are doing it, and what they might be needing. They may not need their wife or girlfriend to look like Scarlett Johannsen, but that they need their wife or girlfriend to talk to them.

Each other needs to be able to to express the feelings that each other has. Once you are able to talk about your feelings about it, it takes the tension out of the relationship, and can bring some playfulness and passion back into our sex life.

JF: So, there might be some positive aspects to talking about pornography in one’s relationship?

LG: Yes. Maybe we can look at pornography as the door to improve or enhance our relationships.

I’ve had a number of calls recently from girls (and a couple guys) who are struggling in their relationships or marriages because online pornography comes between them. Usually, she will find the porn sites that he has gone to, and then be in a state of shock and discomfort, and not know how to initiate a conversation with her guy about this.

Maybe the Internet has made porn so much more readily available for guys, instead of walking into your local 7-11 with fake mustache and trenchcoat to ask for what’s behind the corner. It’s much easier and readily accessible to you, and is a convenient place to go when there are relationship problems.

Pornography may be both taking away something from your relationship, or it may be caused by rifts in it already. It seems as if porn could be a chicken-egg dilemma – which comes first – the problems in your relationship, or the porn? Maybe both.

I think that pornography becomes addictive for men, because as men, we are visually wired by evolution. Using porn creates a certain distance from sex or intimacy, by objectifying the online images that are seen. It takes away from sexual intimacy, and creates distance between the viewer and the images. It has an effect of emotional distance, when you have to get off by images that are parts or representations of people, and not the real people.

The use of porn implies having relationships with exaggerated parts of women, not the women themselves or the relationships with them. Real sex is different, and more complicated. If there are sexual fears or inhibitions, they will necessarily come out within your sexual relationship. Porn doesn’t elicit those fears or inhibitions, and thus it is easier to engage in.

For guys, the use of porn can be a stress reliever, and a way to deal with the build up stress (or other emotions, such as anger) that accumulate and have no other avenue of expression for your guy. In other words, maybe the experiences that he is having have no other outlet other than porn. Guys have been masturbating to porn since the beginning of porn time, and trying to not get caught in their bedrooms by their mothers when they are adolescents. There may be some hidden messages of shame that guys recreate when they use porn, if sex was dirty, shameful or not discussed when they were growing up. 

Problems in your relationship may trigger your guy to use porn. He may already be emotionally avoidant, or may have a hard time in your relationship communicating (especially about sex and sexual intimacy). The sexual motivations of your guy to use porn may or may not speak to the problems that you both are having in your relationship. The problem may lie in something unrelated to sex, but then again, it might not. It’s hard to say without couples counseling for this kind of thing. See my website for some more information on my services to help you deal with this problem: http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/index.html.

The use of porn will surely distance you from him in more than one way. He becomes distant from you through his use of porn, and then when you find out he’s doing it, it becomes really difficult to have the conversation with him.

He won’t bring it up, because he’s probably too scared that you’ll catch him using it. And, it’s an easy thing to want to minimize on his part – “I don’t have a problem. I just use it once in a while.” Classic addictive behavior can ensue: lying, falsifying, denying, making up stories to cover it up or to go use it. Watch out for these signs because it may be affecting your relationship.

The goal is to weave in the fantasies and the sexual communication into your relationship, not leave it to the Internet and to one person alone to be fulfilled. The idea is to deepen and develop your relationship through sex, and communication is the door to get there. Otherwise, sex becomes the most powerful wedge in your relationship. It will quickly drive you both away from each other, if it not dealt with out in the open. It needs to be talked about once his use of porn is identified and admitted. 

- Jason

In celebration of Labor Day Weekend, I was reminded that relationships take a lot of work to succeed. My reaction was “Of course I know this,” and then I thought a little about it, and about what constitutes that work. What are the elements that define that often nebulous statement?

It’s safe to say that for men, these three things are the most important keys to a happy relationship. They are what will make or break a relationship – absolutely, hands-down and no qualms about it. Other than healthy communication, if your wife or girlfriend is not feeling loved, wanted or seen, you’re doomed, brother. You should some in so we can talk and fix the situation.

On being loved, wanted and seen: They have to know it from you. You have to show them regularly that they are well loved. I get this feedback regularly from Leanne, my own partner (Welcome, Leanne, to the blog!). She tells me that girls need to know those things through these ways (take notes, guys):

• complimenting her/validating her on her looks, body, charm, etc.
• telling her that she is beautiful and/or sexy; communicating sexual desire of her
• Initiation of sex (yes, fellows, believe it or not)
• telling her that she is good at something in her life, smart, etc.
• Simply telling her (genuinely) that “I love you.”
• generous supply of meaningful hugs
• planning events or date nights out, and then following through on them
• spontaneously doing things for her that communicate “I’m thinking about you.”
• watching the criticisms/judgments or her or her behavior

I was flipping through a magazine at the barbershop earlier today, and came across a disturbing idea. The article identifies the most popular men’s stress inducers, and the most popular stress relievers (source: Yankelovich Health and Wellness Study, 2006, in Best Life magazine, September, 2008)

Topping the inducers: planning one’s financial future, job/career, keeping family safe, health care costs. Interestingly, the state of your health came in third from last place, of a total of 12 inducers.

High on the relievers: taking a mental break, fun and laughter, exercise, sex, eating, tippling, smoking and… therapy, ranking a dead last of 12 relievers.

Why is this? Therapy is less important to men than smoking, eating, or tippling (whatever that is). What does this exactly say about us as men? I know it’s a tough economy, but I am managing to stay working in my practice with a large clientele of men. Does this reflect something about our culture stigmatizing counseling for men? Do men underreport their experiences in counseling?

Now, I am a realist. I get that counseling won’t be number one, especially when I am competing with sex, eating and prescription drugs. But, I think that this is a loaded idea, one that says something about either the underreporting of men seeking counseling or therapy, or that is is still seen as a less important to a man’s overall well being.

I don’t think counseling is the be-all, end-all of stress management. Stress management is a holistic concept, one that incorporates a wide variety of lifestyle choices that include counseling. 

Here’s some stress reliever ideas for those guys out there in the study who haven’t sought out counseling (by Phoenix, Arizona’s Counselor for Men):

• Exercise – exercise is an antidepressant, and can get your endorphins shaking for good feeling
• Communicate – for guys that don’t know how, this is a big source of stress. Not knowing how to do this in the right way can build up inside, and turn into physical pain, anger and tension.
• Watch the alcohol, caffeine, nicotine and sugar intake – all of these foods can promote stress and leave you tired, edgy or depleted. They all affect your mental well-being.
• Yoga – a lot of guys are doing this now, and it’s not as weird for guys to do this as it might have been once. The antidepressant GABA is activated during yoga. It’s great for tension and stress relief, and it’ll give your overactive mind a rest for once. Plus, if you are a single guy, there is ample opportunity to meet women (after class, of course).

One of the things that I have been thinking about is how we play games to avoid the fear of being rejected by women. I notice this with some friends I have, and with some clients. The one way in which this seems to be most apparent to me is by displaying the opposite behavior: rejecting the woman or potential relationship partner first. 

It happens less that people actually own up to being afraid of rejection, because a lot of the time, they don’t know it’s there. Honestly, I think we’re afraid of the fear. We are afraid that if this person gets to pierce through our facade, they will find someone that they didn’t bargain for, someone less adequate than the initial facade that was show to them through the dating process. Sex is used in this way, to speed up the intimacy process and to bypass the getting to know you process.

Some men that I know reject women after sleeping with them, over and over again. Not only do I feel ashamed as a guy, but feel bad for the female rejectees who are probably relationship-minded and are seeking something else during the act of sex with this person. Women are more intimacy and relationship minded; when we reject them after sex, or soon thereafter, we give them them messages that they are not good enough or unworthy or our affections. In effect, we are displacing (or projecting) our inadequacies onto them through the very act of rejecting them. 

Men have a notoriously difficult time opening up to their feelings, and opening up to fear of rejection is by no means any exception to that rule. It gets transformed into a socially acceptable thing – to bed women and conquer them, which creates an endless cycle of loneliness and misery. It’s very difficult to create a satisfying relationship under these conditions, and a lot of guys are left to do this cycle over and over again.

I can help you with these types of problems if you suspect that you are a guy (or girl) who creates this “rejection cycle” for him (or herself). It’s hard to break this cycle on one’s one, and as a Counselor for Men, I know the inner workings of this cycle to help you break the cycle once and for all. Call me at 602.309.0568 to set up a free consultation to talk about this with me.

- Jason