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There are 2 important requirements to maintain this kind of relationships. Dealing with ‘third’s’ i.e. everyone other than us.  This includes, children, parent’s bosses, telemarketers, alcohol etc.  We need to deal with third’s in ways that do not threaten the relationship.  If we like a drink together after work and it connects us – Fantastic.  If it leads to financial stress, fights or violence it needs to be dealt with differently.  If the kids ballet, art extension and private school mean we have financial stress and no time for sex – then our task is to change the programme. If we fight after ever Sunday dinner with Mum then we need to make a new plan.

Exercise – take a moment to list any third’s that might be impact your relationship.

The second requirement is reinforcing commitment to be there.  This may involve some explicit declarations.  No matter what – I will always be there.  I’m so glad you are my partner – i look forward to being old and wrinkly with you.  It will also involve some specific actions or behaviours that may be specific to your relationship.  I always save my last dance for you.  When i come back from trips I bring you flowers.  I always get you 5 daffodils on your birthday to remember our first date.  These behaviours underscore the preciousness and uniqueness of the bond between us.

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http://www.oprah.com/own-supersoulsessions/brene-brown-the-anatomy-of-trust-video

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There is a secret permission that many woman ignore because they don’t normally need to use it with their girlfriends or even with close male friends.  Women tend to operate from the assumption that talking about issues is a good thing that will help you resolve emotional issues, get closure and feel better.  This is typically based on decades of socialisation and experience.  The vast majority of men do not share this assumption.  For most men talking about issues tends to highlight some area in which they have failed or could have done better.  Since men tend to evaluate themselves on a task basis if you (woman) are upset I (guy) have failed and so it connects me with a sense of shame and failure and my experience is that any conversation starting with the  phrase, “We need to talk,” is a conversation best avoided.

Now as men we are adept at avoiding conflict.  Negotiating high school requires us to learn multiple ways to avoid humiliation, conflict with the bullies or big kids, or unnecessary conflicts with our male friends because if we fight the odds are that we will lose that friend permanently.  So if you picture our islands we have moats, castle walls, crocodiles, barbed wire, land mines, snipers etc.  Whereas women tend to invite, relish and initiate connection and will often take significant risks for connection, men tend to prioritise safety and will sacrifice connection if there is a perceived safety threat.

Because of this difference most women blithely assume that it is ok to go wandering over to a man’s island and then feel shocked, attacked, ambushed when they trigger one of the man’s defenses.  In a woman’s world she would love it if he would paddle over to her island and surprise her with a picnic and a small gift.  Men on the other hand get really stressed when there is an unidentified intruder on their island.

So the permission is simple – it goes like this.  “I would like to talk to you about planning Christmas holidays this year, would now be a good time to talk about it?  What this does is engage the man’s adult brain (neocortex) and gives him a chance to consciously evaluate the invitation. The invitation bypasses the automatic defense system in the baby brain (amygdala) and gives him the chance to consider it rationally and say.  “Sure now is a good time” or, “Actually I’m really busy.”

There are three keys to a successful invitation.

The first is that it should be invitations should be inviting – smile, touch, appreciate – your tone is one of the most important keys to successful invitations.  Remember men do want to be connected but they will prioritise safety and will actively avoid unsafe situations.

Secondly, invitations should be specific. The specific invitation also tells him which part of his island you want to come to  (and some areas are more available than others e.g. “I would like to talk to you about how to sexually pleasure you more,” is a conversation few men will turn down.  Other areas may be significantly more defended money, sexual issues, family problems and others are likely to attract some blocking (we will talk more about some strategies to negotiate heavily defended areas in a later post).  It also gives him an idea of how long the conversation will take.  Many avoidant men have a huge fear of the never ending conversation.  In fact it can help to say I probably need about 10 minutes or half an hour – and stick to that time frame.

Thirdly an invitation can be declined.  If an invitation cannot be declined it is in fact a demand which is a specific threat.  So expect your man to check if if he can say no – he will test this.  The thing to remember is that if you invite a conversation and he declines and you respect that (i.e. no tantrums, demands etc) you automatically became safer in his world.  Invitations make a man feel respected, desired and valuable these significantly soothe the baby brain.

In the next  post I’m going to look at a specific skill you can use to increase the odds of your invitations being embraced.

* I apologise in advance for the gross generalisations in this blog.  These generalisations hold true for about 80% of couples where the woman is the expressive talker.  For about 20% of couples the reverse is true and these strategies will work very well for a woman who tends to shut down.

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What most woman are looking for in a listening conversation is Empathy, a right brain limbic response.  Despite the protests about men trying to fix their problems the fact is that women offer solutions all the time to other women and to their men and are happy to receive solutions IF they feel the sense of limbic resonance that occurs when someone activates their mirror neuron network (check out this post for more on the mirror neuron network) and feels with them.  This is clearly shown in the video when the guys says, “that sounds .. tough,”.

What men are typically looking for is Validation.  Validation is largely a left brain cortical response that says, “You make sense to me, you are not a crazy person, I understand why you think the way you do.  Note it does not necessarily mean you agree.  When a man gets Validation he is then open for Empathy, which enables him to feel more connected and a man will feel very loved when he receives care in this order.

So the first rule is Validation first, then Empathy.  When a guy has a problem he wants to fix it and so he will be collating information in the back of his head at the TPJ (temporal parietal junction) and feeding it forward to his left prefrontal cortex to problem solve. He will actively be avoiding his emotional connection with his right limbic brain so that he does not get overwhelmed and feel helpless.  A woman who listens to his work issues and says, “wow that’s so tough, or so unfair, you must feel really humiliated,” i.e. showing wonderful Empathy is actively drawing him into his right limbic brain – which for most guys is unfamiliar and highly uncomfortable.  

There is a very real brain reason for this difference. Most women have up to 80% more connections in the corpus collossum the thick band of neural connections that bridge the left and right hemisphere of the brain.  This means that jumping back and forth between right and left hemisphere’s is quick and easy.  This is what enables women to link emotional and logical processes very easily whereas men tend to do them one at a time.  First logic then emotion.  Reversing this order is additionally difficult for men for a reason I will discuss next week.

However when a woman Validates a man’s actions or thought processes, “Yeah it makes sense that you felt mad, I can see why you hate that guy, I understand that you wanna move to Alaska and live in an igloo,” it acts as a clearing house for his thoughts.  NB you are not agreeing to go to Alaska to live in an igloo with him you are just saying that you understand his work environment today was so tough that Alaska sounded awesome.”  Validation in this context is essentially thought empathy and men find it incredibly soothing – and it enables them to move on to more productive thoughts and problem solving.

The biggest benefit for the woman is that the guy just learnt that he can share his slightly crazy thoughts and he will be understood, accepted and loved – and men will take a bullet for a woman like that.  I have on countless occasions coached a woman to listen, summarise what her partner says and say, “I listened carefully to you and what you said makes sense to me,” and seen the man’s eyes well up with tears and he breathes out this huge sigh of relief – because suddenly he is not alone in his world.  At this point empathy can be added and it provides an additional layer of connection.

So try it this week, just casually in a conversation with a man, just nod as he talks and then just say, “yeah I get that it makes sense to me.”  You may find this introduces a new problem for you where they want to talk to you all the time (or they may just grunt and nod – but they are 100 times more likely to talk to you again) …

Happy Validating – Next week we will look at how to give advice and the most important thing to avoid.

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However his song Mirrors touches on a number of the most interesting and elusive themes in relationships. Last week we looked at the concept of the lost self – this week we are going to look at the related theme of Complementarity.  This video captures the idea beautifully and is by a fabulous Kiwi artist Edwin Derricutt called Symmetry – Check him out here .

Complementarity is the idea is that we choose partners that are strong in areas we are weak.  As you will see this is the other side of the lost self,  or put another way the process by which relationships are supposed to heal the gaps created by the lost self.  And just by way of proving you can find relationship insights everywhere I’ll take you to Rocky 1 where Rocky Balboa explains why he fell in love with Maria.

So in the honeymoon phase we appreciate our partner’s strengths in the areas we are weak.  But we typically fail to consciously recognise just  how different our partner is from us.   So we tend to think of our partner as reflecting ourselves – our preferences – our styles.  If my partner is strong, I feel powerful; if my partner is loving I feel tender; if my partner is passionate I feel free.  Which in the honeymoon phase feels fantastic.  The problem emerges in the next stage of relationship in the power struggle.  When my partner gets upset I assume she is acting like I would.  So if I started yelling at my partner or telling them they didn’t love me I would have my bags packed and be ready to leave.  So when my partner gets upset and starts reacting emotionally in this way my child brain tells me, “She hates me, I failed, I’m a bad person, She’s mean etc.”  My baby brain starts panicking because I don’t feel secure in the relationship and that is extremely unsafe for me and I want to do anything to fix it.  These younger brains start yelling at my adult brain to find a solution – my stressed adult brain goes to the things I’m good at doing (fixing problems).  When that doesn’t work my adult brain gets flooded and goes offline (literally that part of the brain disconnects).  Then I’m left with the strategies I had a 4-8 year old which in my case was to go and climb a tree outside the house.

However my partner is on the other side of the mirror.  She feels upset because I am not available and her child brain feels alone and disconnected, so she starts crying and protesting hoping that I (an adult) will see her child brain upset and move to cuddle and listen her, something I may well have done in the honeymoon phase.  When I react by being logical she feels distressed and frustrated, “He’s not getting me,” so she tries to help me by protesting louder so I try a different strategy.  When I get stressed and withdraw this upsets the child brain, but terrifies the baby brain for whom disconnection is synonymous with death.  At this stage she will literally be out of her (adult) mind with anxiety or may simply collapse and give up.  Needless to say this is horribly distressing and upsetting and over time we will tend to disconnect to protect ourselves from the vulnerability of deep, loving connection.  The unconscious message from the baby brain is something like, “If I really love you and you leave me I might die, if I love you less I might survive.”

Ironically in this very common scenario what we both want both want basically the same thing; safe, calm, loving connection.  So the key to moving through the mirror is to start by recognising that the partner we fell in love with, that warm, loving, caring, emotional person, is still there.  What this means is that we send a different message to our child brain.  The new message goes something like this.  “Wow she’s really upset she is in her 6 year old brain now.  Hmmm what would my daughters need when they were acting like this?  Well they are (in my case) an emotional being (maybe in your case they are a logical fixer).  Well then she wants to be heard and understood.”  Then I start listening  and aiming to meet her needs in her style.  This typically means listen and letting go of trying to solve the problem – you can’t solve emotions simply be present with them.  When you do this in a calm, loving and connected it becomes safer for my partner to have her experience and she  moves through the process of connecting with her deep values which clears her mind to choose her next path of action.

If your partner is a fixer you might remind yourself, “Ok he really loves me he just wasn’t trained to deal with emotion.  So he’s probably sweating right now behind that blank face, trying to find a way to fix everything and freaking out because he can’t,”this will help you engage your compassion and your positive view of your partner.  Then you can say, “Babe I’m really upset right now I need you to sit down, hold my hand and just nod and listen while I talk, then give me a hug, tell me you love me and I will feel a lot better.” What this does is the give the fixer a job so they stay present and they don’t get so overwhelmed.

The great thing about doing this is that it tends to be a lot more effective.  Additionally our baby and child brain receives our loving care of our partner as if it happened to us, and it starts to reactivate the underutilised neural circuitry of our lost self.  For me a fixer that means over time I become more loving, empathic and intuitive, for my partner she becomes more stable, centred and calmer.  The final benefit is that often as our partner calms they are more able to ease back into accommodating our style because their adult brain comes online.

You can read more about the lost self and complementarity  in Imago Relationship Therapy founders Harville and Helen LaKelly Hunt’s book Receiving Love

Next Week I want to look at living with Mr fix it – thanks for reading your comments are always welcome.

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However his song Mirrors touches on one of the most interesting and elusive themes in relationships which is the concept of the lost self.

In short the lost self is the part of ourselves we had to cut off in order to survive in our family of origin.  A common example of this is when men are socialised to ignore or diminish their feelings.  For instance a little boy who cries when hurt may well be shamed or ignored, while a little girl is more often hugged and comforted.  Now there are two important points to note.  The first is that the needs for comfort are human needs not male or female specific. Secondly the dominant child brain during this formative period tends to operate in the continuous present.  What this means is that the part of us that holds those unmet needs still longs for them to be met and we bring these unmet needs into our relationships.  Incidentally you can see this in operation at any Big Boys toys show – what you have is a bunch of 8 or 13 year olds (in 50 year old bodies) running around oohing and aahing about the shiny red car etc.

Now when it comes to love we tend to fall in love with someone who holds important parts of our lost self.  For me as someone growing in a highly logical thinker family I adapted by tending to ignore my emotional, empathic side.  So I tend to fall in love with deeply empathic emotional women – my child brain that controls a lot of the attraction process is looking for someone who is able to help me access those lost undeveloped parts of me. My partners tend to value my calm, stable problem-solving attitude and find it very relaxing and stabilising.  Which is a great deal of fun in the honeymoon stage of relationship when they think I am the most wonderful man on the planet.  

However in the power struggle stage when they are upset with me I find that very distressing and I tend to cope by getting very logical and trying to fix things – they percieve that as cold and unloving.  Then the disconnect happens as they (caught up in their child brain) try to get my attention by being more upset and emotional e.g. “You always, do this, you don’t love me at all, you never listen etc”.  Then I (also caught up in my child brain) try to get them to calm down by explaining that they are being illogical – because I heard every word they said (they are yelling after all); and of course I love them (or why would I still be there); and of course I listen because otherwise I couldn’t respond (duh).  Unsurprisingly my ‘helpful’ advice doesn’t work because they are responding emotionally.  They don’t feel heard, they don’t feel my love, they don’t feel my understanding because if I heard their emotional message my eyes would soften, my face would show care and concern and I would move towards them with a hug and a response like, “Wow you sound so upset, lets make a cup of tea and sit down so you can tell me all about it.”

You can read more about the lost self in Imago Relationship Therapy founders Harville and Helen LaKelly Hunt’s book Receiving Love

In part 2 we will look at Symmetry – watch this space

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