“Women make love for love, men make love for lust.” Ph.D. John Gray, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationship.” 1993
“We mistakenly assume that if our partners love us they will react and behave in certain ways �" the ways we react and behave when we love someone.” Reading Mr. Gray’s book I am inclined to agree that we do come from different planets. By the way this is the book Dr. Phil should have read before he wrote his own. Gray’s book is not an easy read, which I am the first to admit, but it has wealth of useful information about what’s going on in a relationship between a man and a woman. Basically we are from different planets, or, at least, behave as if we were. Men need space, women need to feel close to their partner, men need appreciation, and women need feelings… As if this was not enough we use the same words but mean different things.
Men are like rubber bands that occasionally need to pull away from their loving partner and then get close again and women are like waves on an emotional journey moving between happy and unhappy states (not necessarily related to the menstrual ones). Both men and women have ups and downs and for both it’s a cycle of, on average, 28 days. Unfortunately there is no coordination, and when woman is feeling down often the man is feeling down too, and as a result they cannot help each other. A man expects some space, so that he can solve his problems on his own without the female "helping" out, while women want to talk about own problems with men but don’t want men’s quick-and-dirty solutions.
Men try to treat women like men, and women try to treat men like females. And since men have different ways of handling their problems from women they inevitably clash. Women expect men to listen and understand, men expect women not to interfere. It’s an unsolvable equation, unless men start to behave like women or women start to act like man. Not all that difficult, or?
Women need to be allowed to have “low” periods in order to resolve their emotional problems and then they need man’s emotional support. Unfortunately, men don’t understand that need and prefer to watch TV instead. No wonder that after a while a permanent break occurs. If a woman is not allowed to feel down and if her partner doesn’t help her to resolve her emotional problems, then she won’t be able to feel or give love, either.
Besides, in every new relationship we try to resolve our problems from our childhood and past relationships and this doesn’t really help.
There is much, much more and the book contains lots of useful stuff. Pity that it is not an easy read. Like many other writers Mr. Gray believes that more is better and it seldom is. Had he tried to limit himself to 100, instead of almost 300, pages, the book would have been much more entertaining. As it is now, you have to prepare for a mental fight but it can be well worth the effort. This is definitely one book that can tell you what your problems depend on and how they can be, at least in part, resolved.
The above article has been published by “The Universal Court of Love”, http://AskAandE.atspace.com that welcomes all readers with their love questions and problems. The site is entirely dedicated to love in all its human forms. If you’re looking for love advice based on scientific research and personal experience, then you’ve come to the right place.
Student of psychology and the human mind. Influenced mainly by Freud and Junbg, but also by modern research.
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