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Be Comfortable As a Woman (In
Chapter 2)
After talking closely with hundreds of women,
listening to the issues and experiences they have
had and reading the amazing emails I receive about
women’s frustrations and insecurities in their
relationships, I’ve recognized something valuable.
To end up where they want to be in their love life
and in their relationships these women need to:
• Accept that it’s OK to have the feelings they have
• Accept that it’s OK to want what they want from
any relationship and that they should be honest
about it no matter what
• Recognize that a relationship will not make them
happy or “whole” as a person
Accepting and realizing these things is easier said
than done, so I’ve included some exercises later in
the book to help on that level. (Check out sections
in Part 2, specifically Chapters 4 and 6.)
But WHY is it important for a woman to accept these
things?
Well, it’s important because after years of working
with men and women I’ve seen a negative judgment (or
stereotype) of women that is pervasive among many
men. Men assume women depend on them for emotional,
social, and physical validation. It’s a chauvinistic
bias that is often reinforced in men’s lives by
their single friends, peers, television, etc.
I call this negative female stereotype the “Helpless
Woman Myth.” You can see it when you hear men talk
about women and relationships—they have this
negative tone and subtly imply that women are clingy
and seek security through men. As for relationships,
men talk as if a woman will be taking something away
from him if he goes out with her or commits to her.
It’s as though the man will somehow lose all his
control, freedom, and masculinity.
What I’ve discovered from my studies is that these
men are THREATENED by a woman’s own emotional
awareness and her ability to attune to people’s
emotions and empathize on a very basic human level.
Women have a natural skill, intuition, and
intelligence that give them an amazing capacity for
love and caring. Men, more often, lack these natural
abilities and the tools to be more emotionally
aware. Instead, some men put down or ridicule the
emotional world women see and experience because
these men can’t comprehend a woman’s emotional
state.
Since men surely don’t hold the upper hand with
intelligence in the emotional and intuitive world,
they cast down emotional intelligence as inferior to
other kinds of intelligence (literary, mathematical,
scientific, etc.) In fact, men have spun emotional
strength into a weakness. Men’s perceptions about
the value of emotions and relationships has been
deeply instilled in them through evolutionary
biology, fed to them through our culture, pushed on
them by male peers, and even reinforced through
religion.
I’d go as far as to say that it’s more of a
mainstream male belief that women are emotionally
“hysterical” and out of touch, than the belief that
women are actually BETTER at seeing that part of the
world that most men can’t properly observe.
Are you following me here?
I don’t mean to get too far out, but I think that if
women can better understand that men have a
completely different emotional “tool set”, women
will be much better prepared to deal with their
interactions with men.
So ask yourself some important questions. Take out a
pen right now and write these questions down, think
about them, and write your thoughts out. Here are
the questions:
What are my beliefs about the values and strengths
of my emotional experience? How do men perceive me
and my emotional strengths and weaknesses? Do my
emotional strengths create conflict with men?
Would men respond BETTER to my emotional strengths
and beliefs if I were to “translate” them in such a
way that men could understand?
Whatever your answers are, you need to make yourself
a promise right now:
No man will make you feel wrong for feeling what you
feel or wanting what you want. Don’t be afraid of
your feelings or desires just because a man is
ridiculing you about something he can’t possibly
relate to. Believe it or not, FEAR is your biggest
enemy when it comes to men, dating, and
relationships.
If you stand your ground, simply be who you are, and
make no apologies for it while calmly but
assertively expressing your desire, then men will
respect you and admire you for it. But if you
approach a man in a way that says you’re trying to
CONVINCE him of your beliefs or trying to get him to
see how he’s wrong and you’re right, or get his
approval just so you feel you have the respect you
deserve, then a man will resist you at every step.
But if you KNOW that you are a woman to be
respected, and you don’t look to him for APPROVAL on
the way you think and feel… the amazing part is that
a man will want to give you his respect and approval
much more than if you did otherwise.
For example, if you tell a man that you “only become
or remain intimate with a man when you’re in an
exclusive relationship” and state that calmly and
assertively, in a matter-of-fact tone, he will
respect it a lot more than if you say, “But we slept
together! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? It
means you should…(owe me an explanation, return my
call, make plans for the weekend with me, etc.)”
Do you see how in the first example you state your
desire and your feelings about intimacy, and in the
second one you’re trying to convince the man to
behave a certain way based on what you THINK he
should do?
When it comes to discussions about your
relationship, if you find yourself saying the word
“should” a lot to your man, watch out. It’s usually
a sign that you’re being the CONVINCER, and it will
probably mean he’ll start rebelling against
everything you’re trying to convince him of...
(click on the eBook below to purchase and continue
reading!)
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