The Love Goddess Blog

Dear Goddess,

I’m a man under huge pressure to “talk more” about my feelings to my girlfriend. I care a lot about her, but I’m not much of a talker. My last girlfriend wanted me to talk more, too. What IS this thing with women about talking….why can’t they see that we love them without having to hear it all the time?

My guess is that your girlfriend doesn’t need to hear it all the time–if what “it” means is that you love her. I suspect what she needs to hear is what’s going on with you.  What you noticed today. What happened in your life–preferably, your internal life. Yes, I know it’s hard when you’re not used to it. But bear with me.

What both genders want is connection. A feeling of being “in it” together. It’s isolating to supposedly share the same story with someone when that someone won’t reveal his feelings and his thoughts because he feels they’re not necessary.  Conversation is one way to connect; it’s also part of writing a script together, the story you two are “writing” about your lives and your future. If you can’t contribute the details, what’s the story about? That’s what she’s wondering.  So, no, it’s not about repeating your love for her. It’s letting her in on your responses to the world; the details of your work that day; your dreams; your attitudes toward what’s going on politically–anything and everything that lets her know who this man is with whom she’s connected. 

Well, you say, why words? Why not sex? Can’t that communicate feelings? Can’t a woman just understand that sex is an equally powerful connection?

Of course we can. Sex is a fabulous connection. And so is conversation. Both move us toward intimacy, that state so many of us long for and so few of us feel we get. So why not go for it? Develop the skills she craves that help move you toward that lovely mood of ongoing closeness?  

There are loads of reasons why men aren’t as skilled as women in this area; you’re not alone. (We’ll talk more about it.) And loads of reasons why women have other things to conquer in themselves that men do better. But I promise you this: If you put in the effort to be more verbally communicative, even if you don’t feel you’re doing it all that well, you’ll have a warmer, happier, more contented girlfriend–one willing to give you warmer, happier, more connected sex. Because her desire for you, in the long run, depends on her sense that you’re both sharing your hearts with one another.   

Posted in Love and Dating
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A woman named Patricia who just read my book, Drama Kings, writes:   

“You pose a very important cultural question in the book: when will the society begin to help men evolve?  So much love advice is in steering the women toward a better set of skills to keep the man stuck, cajoling him, overlooking truly strange and destructive emotions–because men are well…men. The message is even handed over from one woman to another: Perhaps if you had just done something different, worked a little harder, you could have kept that man with the really inappropriate behaviors in our lives. So I wonder, do you see your mission to first wake women up to the social evolutionary cycle we are in and then write a book for men…[and begin] setting men free from their outdated attitudes? ”

I think the culture will have to wake up to the need to help men evolve for one simple reason: Women are leaving men. And even though men can continue to choose ever-younger women if they wish to, the younger ones will demand more.  We can’t go back, despite those who wish for those good ol’ days that never were:  Women are insisting on a kind of connection they could never insist on before and at some point a guy has to say, “Okay, so what do I do to get you to stay?”  And we all–therapists and clients and men and women in relationships– have to know that this situation is not men’s fault: They were raised to disconnect from intimacy at a startlingly young age (between 3 and 5, according to research), just as women were raised to disconnect from their authentic voices–their truth– before their teens.  We’re in a terrible dance, with women withholding the truth from men and “handling” them instead; and men hating this and not trusting the women they want to love, and pulling away more and more.

 I think there’s hope. Women will continue insisting on the connection we want–intimacy, after all, is a practice– but only with men who want to try it and who basically say, Okay, I’m In.

You can tell which men are willing and which dig in their heels; which ones feign sensitivity and hate women even more than the heel-diggers–pretty quickly. And we women have to cop to and deal with our atavistic tendency to hold in the truth and ”handle” men and then call them babies…..the whole  sitcom scenario (the clueless, fat adolescent husband and the all-knowing dissatisfied wife) being  so much easier than doing what scares US all. For women that’s is telling the truth and being authentic and risking everything we learned we’d risk if we weren’t darling little airbrushed sweetiepies. For men, it’s acknowledging that Relationship is the antidote to all that ails them, including depression and isolation.

The only real choice is this:  Two people who get it, know they’re up against a culture in which women have been seriously disempowered and men have  seriously disconnected from intimacy, both of whom know they’ve been traumatized not by each other but by the culture, who want to do what it takes, on a daily basis,  to be intimate.

Otherwise, as my mother once said, men and women should just live in separate dorms and see each other on weekends. But I’d rather go for the gold.

Posted in Love and Dating
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