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And we feel frustrated and upset when it appears that you don’t understand us.
But the truth is – and here’s the admission – we do not always fully understand ourselves, either.
Why is it, for instance, that at one moment a woman can seem to be so strong and competent, and the next so fragile and insecure?
What is it about us that makes us feel like a powerful goddess when we are at our best, and like a helpless little girl at our worst?
Why can we be the most enthusiastic cheerleader, the most stalwart supporter, the most loyal protector, the most wise adviser to everyone else – but not always to ourselves?
What does it mean that we can do a million things at once and seem to be handling it all effortlessly until suddenly, in one moment, we collapse under the weight of too much responsibility and just want to crawl under the covers?
Where does our ability to love so deeply come from?
Why is it that we so easily sacrifice our own needs in order to fulfill those of others?
Why do we seem to require more time, attention, and reassurance from men than they require from us?
Why are we the way we are?
We know men ask themselves these questions about us. And whether we readily admit it or not, we have the same questions about ourselves. The good news is that there are answers, reasons that, as women, we feel what we feel, and do what do. These answers are contained in the pages that follow, and are meant to enlighten women as well as men, as they shed light on the mystery of our nature, of our mind and our heart, of our desires and our longings.
Allow me, for a moment, to take you into the heart of a woman, and, through the following stories, reveal our own struggle to understand ourselves:
You know the man you love is going through a hard time in his life, contemplating making some difficult business decisions. Lately, he’s been anxious and distracted, and you want so badly to help in some way. One night after dinner you bring up the subject of his dilemma, sharing some thoughts you’ve had about the challenges he faces, suggesting steps he could take to resolve his problem. As you begin to talk to him, a tense look appears on his face, and with each new idea you present his frown gets worse and worse. Suddenly, you feel him pull away, as if you’ve just been shut out entirely.
“What’s wrong, honey?” you ask with concern.
“I just want to handle this situation myself,” he replies curtly “I don’t need your advice.”
“But I’m only trying to help,” you explain.
“Why don’t you let me figure it out my own way? Don’t you trust me?” he answers, obviously angry. “I hate when you get bossy and controlling like this.” And he leaves the room.
You stand there watching your husband walk away, your heart pounding and tears filling your eyes. You want to run after him, but you can’t find the right words to explain how you feel, how all you wanted to do was to support him. Instead, your efforts have made things even worse. You feel like such a failure. And a part of you wonders: “Is he right? Am I controlling like he says?”
A long weekend is coming up, and you want to spend it with your boyfriend. You had hoped he would mention it by now, but he hasn’t, and you are starting to worry. One night while talking with him on the phone, you bring up the subject: “Have you thought about the holiday weekend?”
“Not really,” he responds.
“Well,” you continue tentatively, “I was hoping we could be together, maybe even go away somewhere.”
Your boyfriend becomes very quiet, and after a few moments says in a flat voice: “Let’s see how the week goes.”
How the week goes? What does he mean by that, you think to yourself. You begin to feel a little panicky. “Don’t you want to spend time with me?” you ask him in a shaky voice.
“Of course I do,” he replies with growing irritation, “but why do we have to plan everything? Can’t you be more spontaneous? You’re so insecure all the time!”
You don’t know how to answer him. You just know that you’d feel so much better if you were sure you could look forward to seeing him that weekend, but you’ve already told him that, and there doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. The conversation ends, and as you get off the phone, you have an ache in your chest that won’t go away. You wonder: “Is he right? Am I too insecure?”
Your husband has left on a business trip. When he arrives at the airport in his destination city, he calls briefly to check in and let you know he is going out for dinner with a client. That night as it’s time for bed you lie there waiting for the phone to ring. You try his hotel room a few times, but get no answer. You leave several messages, and you wait, and you wait, but he doesn’t call. By now, it’s two in the morning, and you’re terribly anxious and worried. Where could he be, and why hasn’t he called? What could keep him from wanting to say good night to you? You finally fall into an uneasy sleep.
The next morning, you get up feeling hopeful, expecting to hear from your husband, but still, nothing. You try to make excuses for him, but you’re having a hard time convincing yourself: “If he was really tired last night, he could at least have called this morning.” As the hours go by with no word from him, your worry turns to paranoia, and your mind proceeds to parade its worst fears before you. “Maybe something is really wrong,” you imagine. “Maybe he got sick; or maybe he’s deliberately avoiding me.” And then the worst fear of all: Could he be there with another woman?
Finally, that evening, your husband calls, and to your great surprise, acts as though everything is fine. “Why didn’t you call me last night or this morning?” you ask in an anxious voice. “I was so worried!”
“I had just talked to you when I arrived, and after dinner I was exhausted and just collapsed into bed,” he answers, his voice expressing bewilderment that you are upset at all. “And this morning I was focused on getting ready for my meeting. Then I went from one event to another. I figured we would talk sometime today.”
You try to explain why you were so agitated at not hearing from him, but it doesn’t come out right, and you’re afraid you sound too desperate and clingy. Your husband listens, and you know by his response that he is annoyed. “Do I have to check in with you every five minutes?” he says sharply “Why do you fall apart just because I don’t call you for twenty-four hours?”
The conversation ends on a bad note, and when you hang up the phone, you feel awful. All you had wanted to do was let him know how much you missed him. Why couldn’t he understand how worried you’d been? Was it that unreasonable for you to have been concerned when he didn’t call or answer his phone? Or could it be that he was right: “Is something wrong with me?” you wonder. “Am I really too needy?”
Most women reading these stories will resonate with the experiences and emotions described because, whether to a lesser or greater extent, we’ve all had these feelings at one time or another. We wonder if our reactions to our partner are justified or if they are overreactions. We question whether our needs are legitimate or excessive. “Am I normal?” we ask ourselves.
As for men, well, I suspect that many of you reading these stories will probably have a very different response, something like: “Here are three perfect examples of the way women overreact and drive men nuts!” And you’re right – these scenarios are typical of the kinds of things women do and feel that men simply don’t understand, and therefore, often categorize as undesirable female behavior.
It is easy to condemn something when we don’t understand it. When not seen with eyes of wisdom and deep comprehension, a woman’s unique and beautiful characteristics can appear as something else not so beautiful to men, and even to ourselves. But when you learn the inner secrets of a woman’s nature, suddenly what appeared to be confusing becomes clear, what seemed unacceptable becomes appreciated, what was challenging becomes endearing.
When I prepared to write this section of the book, my goal was simple. I was looking for a few basic truths about who women are that would help us and the men we love understand our feelings and our behavior. In my research I asked women:
“What are the things you want the man you love to understand about you as a woman at the deepest level of your being?”
“What do you need to explain to your partner about your female nature that is very basic to you, yet, you suspect, so different from the way he experiences the world as a man?”
In the chapters that follow, I’ve done my best to summarize these basics about who women are, why we are that way, and what we want men to know about loving us. The first few chapters focus on three characteristics, the ones I believe are essential to understand in order to truly understand women. So much of why women do what we do, feel what we feel, and say what we say has its source in these truths. They are:
THE THREE BASIC TRUTHS ABOUT WOMEN
1. Women put love first.
2. Women are creators.
3. Women have a sacred relationship with time.
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 present the three secret needs every woman has as a once-and-for-all response to men’s question: “Is there really something I can do that will make her stop complaining and be happy?” (Yes, there is!) And finally, Chapter 7 details “Seven Myths Men Believe About Women and Why They Are Absolutely Wrong”!
1 WOMEN PUT LOVE FIRST (#ulink_d442a38a-ef2e-57af-82f4-5f377bddd4e7)
A few months ago, a male friend I hadn’t heard from in a while called to tell me he was in a new relationship with a woman he’d been seeing for six months. Brian had dated a lot in his life but had never really been seriously involved with anyone, so this was big news. I asked him how it was going, and he answered that things were great, but he had some concerns about his girlfriend.
“What kind of concerns?” I asked him.
“Well, Lori is really terrific, very sweet and affectionate,” he began, “but I’m worried that something’s wrong with her, like maybe she has psychological problems. That’s why I am calling you – to get your feedback.”
“Tell me what she does that makes you think she has psychological problems,” I prompted him.
“To begin with, she says she thinks about me all the time; she calls me during the day just to tell me she misses me; she plans special things for us to do weeks in advance; and she always wants to talk about us and how well we get along. Then last week,” he continued in a very serious voice, “she told me that our relationship is the most important thing in her life!”
“And what do you conclude from all of this?” I asked him, trying to hide the fact that I was smiling on the other end of the phone.
“Well, if she’s so focused on me like that, I think she obviously must be neurotic and insecure.”
“No, dear,” I said to my friend with a chuckle, “she must be a woman in love.”
My friend Brian is a good guy – but he’s a guy. He didn’t have a lot of experience being in long-term relationships, and the way Lori was loving him seemed strange to him, even unhealthy, because he didn’t understand the first secret about who women are: The world of women is a world of love. To love, to be devoted, to cherish intimate relationships is our nature.
What Women Want Men to Know: Women put love first.
When I say women put love first, I don’t mean women choose to make love and relationships a priority – these things just are a priority in our awareness. We don’t choose to have our heart focused on the man we love – it just is. We don’t choose to always be thinking of ways to connect with you – we just do. We don’t decide to put love first – it just is first.
THE LOVE PIE
Here’s an easy and visual way to understand the way women feel about love and relationships. I call it the “Love Pie.”
Visualize two circles, like pies, one representing a man’s consciousness and the other representing a woman’s consciousness. Now imagine a tiny slice cut out in each circle, like a piece of the pie, perhaps one-tenth of the whole. In the man’s circle, that small slice is the percentage of his awareness that he focuses on love and intimate relationships. Everything outside of that slice, the other nine-tenths of the circle, is his awareness focused on his work, his hobbies, his projects, and other activities.
In the woman’s circle, however, it is exactly the opposite: The tiny slice of the pie is the focus of her awareness on work, hobbies, projects, and all the rest of the pie is the focus of her awareness on love, family life, and relationships!
Okay, this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration, but you get my point. Whenever I draw the Love Pie for my seminar audiences, it evokes peals of laughter from both sexes. Why? Because instinctively, we all know it’s true, and as we’ll see, it explains so many of the issues that become problems between the men and women.
Here’s an important distinction to remember: The Love Pie doesn’t symbolize how we divide our time, or how many hours we spend on love versus other activities. It depicts where our awareness is focused on the inside, no matter what we are doing on the outside. For instance, a woman may work in her own career, whether outside or inside the home, for as many hours as her husband does in his, so it’s not like she’s spending one-tenth of the time he does focusing on work, and nine-tenths of her time shopping for lingerie, writing love poems, or fantasizing about how much she adores him. But you can bet that while she is doing her job, she probably thinks more about him than he does about her, and from day to day she is more conscious of the emotional rhythms of the relationship, and more focused on wanting more connection and intimacy.
Sometimes when I share the Love Pie analogy with women, they don’t completely relate to it until I remind them that focusing on love includes focusing on their children. Single mothers can understand this: Perhaps they aren’t in an intimate relationship, but their awareness is still on love the majority of the time – the love and concern they have for their children. Even women who are married often feel the large portion of their Love Pie is more dedicated to their everyday relationship with their kids than to the relationship with their husband. Whether this is healthy or not is a whole other topic, but the point is the same: She is a woman whose awareness, thoughts, and feelings are naturally focused on putting love first.
TAKING A TRIP INTO THE MIND OF A WOMAN
I’ve always said that if men spent a day in the mind of a woman in love, they’d be shocked and amazed at how much we think about them, how aware we are of them no matter what else we are doing. There’s an exercise I sometimes give couples to help the man understand how women put love first, and to give him an experience of our Love Pie: I ask the female partner to keep a “Thought Diary” throughout a typical day, writing down each time her awareness focuses on her mate and describing the situation. Then, she shows him her list. Without exception in the couples I’ve worked with, the male partner is astonished at how often during a day the female partner thinks about him.
I wanted to give you male readers a chance to experience this, so here’s a sample from one woman’s list that she kept in relation to her boyfriend, Joseph. Melissa is an executive at a radio station and has been involved with Joseph for almost a year. I’ve actually only included half of a day’s diary – a full day would go on for pages!
Melissa’s Thought Diary
So what’s your response to Melissa’s Thought Diary? When I show this list to women, they read it and say, “Oh my gosh, that’s exactly what I do!” Perhaps the content is varied for married women or women with children, but the frequency of thought is very similar. Men, on the other hand, have a very different reaction to this list. Some think I’m playing a joke on them, that a list like this can’t be genuine. Others make comments like: “This Melissa seems pretty neurotic,” or “Sounds like she needs to get a life!” Little do these men realize that their own girlfriends or wives probably think about them as much as Melissa thinks about her boyfriend, Joseph.
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.
