Martin G. Friedman is the author of “Straight Talk for Men About Marriage—What Men Need to Know About Marriage (And What Women Need to Know About Men)”. For many years, Marty Friedman taught corporate managers how to create good relationships at work before tackling male/female relationship issues--and applying what he learned to his own marriage. The founder of Men in Marriage, Marty is regularly interviewed on radio and television, and talks to organizations and individuals from a unique, inspirational and humorous perspective. Find out more at www.meninmarriage
.com.
 

The Keys to Understanding Men
and Creating a Lifelong, Loving Relationship

Part one

by
Marty Friedman © 2005

Recently, a female radio host’s very first question to me was: “Why won’t men change?” I answered her: “Men won’t change because women are trying to change them!” I went on to explain that no man wants to be changed by his woman, any more than a woman would want to be “sold” a new blouse by someone. Wouldn’t you rather “buy” than be “sold”? Similarly, men will change when they choose to do so, not when you make demands or criticize them for them not changing. And they are much more likely to choose to change when they come to own their own conclusions and you work with them, rather than against them. The question to explore here is how you can work with your man to create a long and loving relationship.

It may not always look like it, but men want good relationships with their women. They just go about relationships in different, albeit strange ways. You can navigate the choppy waters of relationships with men much, much more effectively when you understand some of the typically male tendencies. Here’s the good news: men are relatively easy to understand. When you know a very few principles you can not only be more effective with men, you may even find that you appreciate them more. Each of the principles I’ll give you are easy to remember and their applications in the world of relationships is profound.

Let’s start with this principle: men love to aggressively take on challenges and tasks—if they perceive the tasks and challenges are worthwhile and they can succeed at them. The ancient myths and legends of nearly every culture tell of men’s exploits, quests, journeys and battles. In these stories, men go outward and compete, do battle, solve, track down, explore, experiment and destroy their enemies in the service of great causes or quests. Myths and legends express something deep in the souls of both women and men--our yearning to find completion and discover our true natures.

Women in our culture today are joining men at the peak of Mount Everest and at the depths of the oceans, as well as in the workplace and in aggressive sports. So, we can no longer say that only men go out and accomplish things in the world. What we can say, however, is that men are driven to do, to act in a linear fashion to make things happen and impact their environment. Since earliest times, men have risen to accept tasks and challenges to fight, conquer and explore, and even today they are usually at their happiest when they are engaged in tasks they perceive are challenging and important, whether it’s taking a car apart or solving an equation. Men feel the need to go outward and perform and solve problems; looking inward to feel and ruminate may not come so easily.

Watch young boys, whom researchers say may have as much as twenty times more testosterone than girls. They are much more aggressive and ambitious than most girls of the same age, more likely to yell, punch and wrestle, and to forcefully “act out”. Every classroom teacher knows that little boys are more likely to yell out the right answers, dominant the discussion and ignore behavior protocol. Cultural influences play a part here, of course—perhaps some of these behaviors are learned--but it’s relatively rare to find cultures where men are passive and women are the aggressive ones.

The point about men’s aggressive natures was brought home to me one night at dinner when our kids were small. My wife and I had tried very hard to discourage play with toy guns of any kind. We did, however, allow him to watch some TV. My four year old son suddenly began to eat his bread into the shape of a gun, pick up the simulated weapon and pretend to shoot everyone at the dinner table while shouting out loud, violent “shooting” noises! Was this “nature” or “nurture”? I don’t know, but I do perceive that masculine energy, whether it’s expressed by women or men, is ambitious, aggressive and task-oriented.

We’ve all seen far too many negative instances of this aggressive impulse in men who bully, abuse or hurt others. Strangely enough, many of these dominant, aggressive men become leaders in organizations-- and make some of the worst bosses. Their masculine energy can wreak havoc over people’s feelings, and they are out of touch with their own hearts. When this aggressive impulse is channeled in the right direction, however, men can direct it into productive challenges and tasks that captivate them. Watch a group of men who are merely observing a sporting event and you can almost feel the testosterone as they yell, argue and coax their teams to victory. (The mounting trend of violence at sports events is perpetrated nearly entirely by men.)

Some men channel the “challenge and task” syndrome into fixing things around the house, others into hobbies. But, in today’s world, men usually find the biggest challenges in their careers; that’s where they apply the most ambition and attention, and where they find what they perceive to be the most worthwhile tasks. Of course, women may be devoted to their careers, too, but if they do they will very likely utilize their own masculine energy to get ahead and compete in the work world, a world that is organized along masculine, linear, competitive lines.

Men without careers or meaningful challenges feel deprived of their masculine energy and sense of power. Unemployed men or those who haven’t found meaningful work for themselves may feel weak partly because society doesn’t recognize them unless they are engaged in a career of some kind. In fact, most men identify so strongly with their work, it may seem as if they believe they are their careers, and when they are unemployed it feels to them as if they hardly exist.

Please understand that although men love challenges and tasks to be solved, this does not mean that men want their relationships to be challenging! In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Men want and expect their relationships to be easy and trouble-free, and they are often shocked and disappointed when their women bring up “problems”. Strangely enough, very few men think about their relationships very often, and if they do they are extremely unlikely to think about the subtleties of it.

Compared to women, men are usually clueless about their relationships or marriages. They are likely to think that their relationships can be maintained by accomplishing a series of tasks. Watch how men act a couple of weeks before Valentine’s Day. A man knows he is supposed to get his woman a gift of some kind, and he believes that he is supposed to create some romance. So, what does he do? He turns the whole holiday into a series of predictable tasks, and he goes on a “search and destroy” mission to complete them: “buy a Vermont Teddy Bear (check); call for a reservation at a nice restaurant (check); buy a Valentine’s card (check); tell the wife you love her (check!). OK…Done! Oh, wait…romance! I’m supposed to be romantic! Now, how does that go again?”

Every man I’ve met wants his woman to be happy. When a woman is happy a man can be happy and relax and feel like he is off duty. More than that, he is likely to feel like he’s performed well--and that’s always important to a man. Most men, however, sing this sad refrain about their unhappy mates: “I just don’t know what she wants!” (There’s a reason why Freud wondered the same thing: he was a man!) Truthfully, men don’t know what to do to make their women happy. And the corollary is: they are waiting for their women to tell them how to make them happy! So, it’s up to you to tell your man how to make you happy.

Now, how do you give your man tasks and challenges without making him feel attacked and criticized? First, you have to be sure about what you want and need before you approach your man, and you have to be willing to ask for it. I know you may wish your man were perceptive enough to know what you want; there are some men out there like that, but they are few and far between. Even sensitive, caring men are very likely to be nowhere near as perceptive about their relationships as their wives. Whether you man is the sensitive, empathic type or the hairy beast from the Stone Age, it’s still going to be up to you to get what you want and to manage the relationship.

If you just want your man to listen as you tell him how you feel about something, that’s fine--just tell him that’s what you need at the beginning of the conversation. If you need something specific from him, e.g. watering the plants, tell him that, too. It’s up to you to communicate the tasks and challenges your man needs to perform, and it’s up to you figure out what you want. For many women, this is the hardest assignment of all: determining what you really need, not your children or husband, not your parents, clients or co-workers.

What you should absolutely not do is ask a man to “talk about the relationship”. Similarly, don’t ask him to tell you how he thinks the relationship is going. Why? Believe it or not, most men expect their intimate relationships to sail along without any maintenance or discussion. Men tell me all the time, “Everything must be going fine, because if it isn’t my wife will tell me!” Men often don’t have much to say about their relationships, unless things are going horribly wrong. They will usually think things are going OK from their perspective unless they are getting too much criticism, or not enough sex. Otherwise, they figure there’s no reason to talk about the relationship.

Relationship talks cause trouble with men for at least two reasons: one, they are usually exploratory, rather than centering around specific tasks to be solved (and therefore “pointless” from a man’s perspective); and two, they are focused on the world of relationships, which immediately puts men on the defensive. Men instinctively know that women are more knowledgeable about this world, have more skill and can speak with great fluency in a language that they don’t understand or speak. Remember: men want to succeed at tasks and challenges that they believe are worthwhile and at those with which they can be successful.

To men, relationship talks are journeys to a foreign and dangerous land, a country where they must be on the defensive because they are unarmed and poorly equipped to succeed. Talking about the relationship is a task at which a man perceives he will fail. More than that, men think the primary purpose of “relationship talks” is to make the man wrong! Why would a man willingly get involved in a discussion like that? What to you probably seems like a useful discussion about the relationship, one which will explore and share perspectives and experiences, seems to a man to be, at best, futile and, at worst, abusive. This helps explain why so many men detest the idea of “going to a counselor” to solve relationship problems: men believe the conversation will be exploratory rather than task-oriented (“another waste of time”), and it will utilize a language that they don’t speak. Men often believe the counselors will join their women in a joyless game of pin the tale on the husband.

So, how do you talk about the relationship? How do you bring up issues and problems? How do you get a man to engage with you in making things better? The most important thing is this: If you want a change in your man’s behaviors, ask him to help you solve a problem, take on a challenge, or complete a task. Don’t expect him to tell you how he feels. Instead, ask him for his help and to take a specific action. Everyone knows that men take pride in doing something on their own without help. (It’s a cliché that men won’t ask for directions.) But, did you know that most men love to give help to others?

Think of the stereotypical man who won’t ask for directions. That man avoids asking for help because he believes he will look weak, and if he asks for help it would indicate that he has failed to perform. If a stranger approaches him, however, do you think he’d give them directions? He’d love to! Most men will gladly give help and offer their expertise to others if they feel that their expertise and knowledge are valued and needed. A man is very likely to feel competent and useful when he gives help, unless he perceives that he is being manipulated or that the person asking is being too needy.

Here’s one key: what you ask a man to do has to be both specific and relatively easy to grant. If you say, “Can you help out more around here and be a full partner in this marriage?” you’ll likely get resistance because, first, it’s not specific (what does “help out” mean?), and, second, he doesn’t know if he can always meet your request, even if he can meet it now. Instead, you might ask, “We have a lot dishes stacking up in the sink these days. Would you be willing to do the dishes on Wednesday nights for the next three weeks when I’m in class?”

Now let’s raise your chances that he’ll take on the action you want. You’ll have a greater chance of getting him to take action if you can convince your man that the action or change is important to you, that you’re not just trying to manipulate or control him. We’ve seen that he wants you to be happy, he wants to solve problems, he wants to know what to do—but he doesn’t want to be made wrong and he doesn’t want to be changed.

And remember: he wants the tasks he takes on to be worthwhile. If he doesn’t perceive that a task is worthwhile in itself, it’s up to you to convince him that’s it’s worthwhile to you, and therefore worth doing. Start your request for a new task by talking about yourself, your own needs and feelings—and leave out the blaming and criticizing. So, it might sound like this: “You know I really care about you and I get concerned if you don’t talk about something. Could you tell me what’s bothering you at work?” (Notice in this example that you explain why you want what you want, and you are expressing that you care about him. How could he refuse? By the way, you are not asking about his feelings—you are asking what’s “bothering” him, and that’s a big difference to a man.)

Timing is important, too. Wait for the right time to talk. Avoid approaching him during a sports event or other favorite TV program or when he is in a bad mood or pre-occupied. Men are usually more approachable when they are not face to face and locking eyes, so go on a hike, take a drive or work in the yard together. One thing’s for sure: the less you make a big deal out of the conversation the better it’s going to go. Take it easy, keep it light, if you can, and keep it short. Low key is best, and quick is better.

Here’s another tip: Create a short list of what you want to talk about in advance of the conversation. What if you don’t know what you want, yet you still crave an intense, exploratory, feeling-based conversation? This may sound harsh, but you are probably better off talking to one of your women friends or someone else you really trust. Your man will likely frustrate your desire for that kind of discussion because he’ll have neither the patience nor the skill that it requires.

To summarize, if you want a man to change: tell him you need his help; tell him how much it would mean to you if he did a specific task or solved a specific challenge; tell him how you feel about the issue without blaming him in any way; and tell him what you want or need. Then, give him time and space to complete the task; if you hover around, grading his efforts and waiting for him to fail, he’ll not only refuse the challenge, but he’ll resist you even more next time. I would advise you to give up control of his tasks and give up having them done “perfectly”, i.e. to your standards; both will sabotage your man. If he fully takes on what you ask him to do and he does it with his heart and mind invested, show him how much you appreciate his efforts.

Copyright 2005 Marty Friedman, all rights reserved