Unloading my thoughts

I started to read a book I bought a few months ago, called Mars and Venus together forever by John Gray P.h.D. It has a ton of great info and I only made it half way through the 5th chapter, 100 plus pages into the book, and I have learned so much information. The 5th chapter has been so far my favorite and has offered the most incite. I was reading one evening and got a tad carried away with my yellow highlighter, half the chapter is now yellow. The chapter is called "Masculine Skills for Listening Without Getting Upset." The chapter is mostly geared to men, but to me it gave me a lot of insight into myself. The chapter is all about teaching a man to do whats called "ducking and dodging." It explains how women tend to react so emotionally, but its not always rational or factual. Women need to share emotions, and by allowing them to do that, and essentially ducking and dodging the emotions she is displaying, she is able to sort through her feelings, and if the man can duck and dodge and not take blame for the emotions she is displaying, a lot can be accomplished. This however is no simple task. "When a man listens to a woman without ducking and dodging, he will repeatedly assaulted by her words and begin to feel blamed, criticized, unacknowledged, misunderstood, rejected, mistrusted, or unappreciated. No matter now much he loves her, after about three direct hits he will no longer be capable of listening to her in a supportive way. War breaks out." It then goes on to explain how women still need to be protected by their men as in days of old. "Security is the most important gift a contemporary man can give a woman. In hunter/nurturer societies, that security was primary physical. Today's it's emotional as well. When a woman feels secure enough to share her feelings with the man she loves and he can listen without being wounded, the relationship can thrive." "The freedom to express emotions safely with their mate's help is vital to woman. Men inevitably express surprise at how much women need to feel safe" The author then goes on to talk about the timing of sharing emotions and what women want when they share these emotions. It has been said time and time again as complaints from women that the problem they have with sharing their problems or feelings with their mate, is that men tend to want to solve their problems. The problem with this is, when a woman is upset, she rarely has the ability to appreciate solutions. "This is because what she needs then is to be heard, not fixed. In some cases a solution makes matters worse by minimizing or even invalidating her feelings." This in turn creates more problems in on the side of the guy because "by offering a solution before a women is ready to hear it, a man is setting himself up to feel rejected- significantly decreasing his ability to continue listening without getting more upset." When a woman is upset, she first wants to talk about it and then decide later what she thinks should happen. A man mistakenly assumes that he has to give in to her feelings and sacrifice what he wants to please her. He feels that in order for her to be OK again, he either has to give in to her point of view. And if he doesn't agree with what she has to say then he feels driven to point out where her argument is lacking to get her to agree with him. "What is required in a relationship is that men control their instincts when they are feeling blamed or attacked and not retaliate." A woman doesn't want a man to give in to her just because he wants her to be happy. A woman admires a man who can have control of his emotions and the sensitivity to respectfully consider her point of view as valid perspective. "Women are turned off by passive and submissive men. They don't want to be the boss in an intimate relationship. They want to be equal partners. If a man respects a woman's primary need to be heard, she will respond by becoming equally respectful of his wishes." The act of dodging is a very difficult task to master. When you hear a woman speaking to you in all emotions, its very easy to think that she is blaming you, the man, for everything wrong in the relationship. And your initial response would be to correct her and prove her wrong in her every misspeaking. The only problem is this kind of approach only creates immediate conflict and friction. "It may convince a judge, but if a man uses such tactics in his intimate relationship, he'll end up using them next in divorce court." The author then says "rather than feeling challenged, I have learned to interpret my wife's questions as a plea for me to "hear" her. When woman become emotional, they generally ask questions as a sign that they need to be questioned themselves so they can explore their feelings." The more a man says, the more there is for a woman to question, and the more upset he will be come. The more words a woman speaks, the more heard she can feel and the more appreciated he will be. The technique to remember here is to delay the answering of questions by asking more questions. Answer her questions by asking her to talk more. "A man will always be tempted to defend his point of view. He instinctively feels that if he could only share his understanding of the situation she would feel better. In truth, she will feel better only when he shares in her understanding of the situation. When a woman feels heard and validated, she can relax. Otherwise she feels she has to fight to be heard." Men assume that when women talk with feelings that they are inflexible, that they have already made up their minds when in fact she is not making conclusions or expressing fixed opinions. When a women shares negative emotions, she is generally in the middle of the process of discovering what she feels to be true. She is not stating an objective fact. I woman talks to "discover" the range of feelings within herself - not to give an accurate description of objective reality. "When a man expresses a feeling, its more like a fact-something he believes to be true but doesn't have a lot of objective evidence to back up. This is not what a woman means when she shares her feelings. For women, feelings are much less about the world and more about their experience of the outer world. For women, feelings and facts are very different animals."

When you read this kind of information, it is meant to someone bridge the gap between men and women. To somehow help us communicate to a better degree. So here I am armed with some of this new information, but its easier said than done, right. I was talking with my mom today, about how funny it is when you are younger to just get married. But the older you get, the more set in your ways you are, and the more experience you have, so you know more of what you do and don't want. The hard part is being older and not being so set in your ways that you can't find balance with someone. Sure you have your ways of doing things, and they work for you, but the world won't revolve around you forever. Its had for some people to realize that not everyone thinks the same way that you do. My mom and I were talking about making beds. It bothers her so much when people don't make their beds everyday. And we have family friends that we have known for 18 years and my mom has said she has just gotten used to the fact that when they come visit they will never make their beds when they leave. She said she has had to realize while that may be important to her, it honestly doesn't cross their minds, cause that is not what they do at their house. Its important to have flexibility in your life, to realize that while some things are important to you, they just may not be important to the other person.