One of our favorite psychologists, Stephen Wollinsky, says that many of the couples he sees for therapy have the same basic issue: he doesn’t know what she is thinking, she doesn’t know what he is feeling.
Oh, before we go any further: this whole post talks about men and women as if they are all the same. Of course, this just isn’t true. Many of you will find the roles reversed; this is just talking about trends. In general, men are taller than women, but we all know plenty of tall women – Sonja and I are exactly the same height in bare feet; in heels, she towers sexily over me. We invite you to read this post in the same way.
We place quite a bit of emphasis on getting savvy about feelings. I know that for many of you, the phrase “getting in touch with your feelings” is downright cringeworthy, but we have definitely found it useful. This doesn’t mean you have to hug everything out, or stand in a circle with people, sobbing. But feelings tell us when our needs are being met. If we understand them, they are like a gauge or a dial on an instrument panel for life. Feelings aren’t facts, but if we know what we are feeling, we can examine whether what we want is in fact wise for us to have. If it is, we can take steps to get it.
Men have a particular issue with feelings. We are often trained from birth to deny, conceal and disguise our feelings. We are left with one or two (usually anger and glee) that are permissible to express, or even feel. This leaves us alienated from fear, sadness – and joy. This can leave the women in our lives suspicious of us, since we don’t seem to belong to the same species. It can also leave us stuck in our head, with our hearts closed to all comers – creating further problems. There’s nothing pretty or admirable about a man who is stuck in his head, running everything through the filter of his “male ego”.
Now, if men are often driven by ego, you can often hear them complain that the women in their lives are driven by emotion. For men, especially men that have been trained that emotions are a sign of weakness and irrationality, any communication with a strong emotional overtone is perceived as extremely overwhelming – the channel simply isn’t open wide enough to receive.
Working on becoming more feeling-savvy will help broaden the channel. For men (and others who are alienated from their feelings), it will help them to hear their partner’s emotional communication without the sense of threat that comes from believing it to be “too much, too strong”. For women (and others who feel things very strongly), it will help you to feel more “accurately” and thus ask for what you really need — oftentimes, what we think we want is really just a cover for a deeper-seated need.
In the meantime, we suggest that women readers do their best to “think like a man”. To do this, imagine that you live in a world of black and white choices. Imagine that you are speaking to a native of a distant land, for whom everything is meant literally — for whom everything has to make literal sense. Realize that he will say “I think” rather than “I feel”. It doesn’t mean he has no feelings; rather, it means that they are buried deep. Don’t bother asking him what he feels about it. If you need to know, ask him: “Broadly speaking, would you say you are happy, sad, mad, glad, afraid, surprised or even put off by this?” This is a list of the basic emotions and will help him.
Most of all, don’t expect him to read your mind. Asking a man to read your mind is like asking Arnold Schwarzenegger to do his best Jimmy Cagney impersonation — it is just not going to play to his strengths. Instead, if you want something: ask for it. If you want understanding, explain yourself. And for our male readers, we recommend allowing her emotions to flow around you and through you like a river. This will help you to empathize with what she is going through, without your feeling engulfed or like you have to save her from her own emotions.
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