For the man who is looking for a relationship, let’s test your understanding of how a woman may see things differently than you do?
Look at the picture on this blog and tell me what you see? Let’s be creative. Let’s say you’re on your second date with someone you could like/love, and you’ve chosen to take her to a local gallery opening. There are interesting people there, free chardonnay and all the cheese and crackers you can eat. You’re on your second glass when you notice this picture hanging on the wall. The group of people who have been blocking your view have moved on. You take your date by her arm and bring this picture to her attention as you stop directly in front of it. Looking at the artists’ rendering of a couple, a switch is turned on in your head, and you find yourself having this dialogue with yourself that might sound something like this. “God, is this picture hot or what? A perfect picture of two people madly in love with each other obviously.” This is what you almost blurt out to her as you turn to her, but you’ve just heard a voice in your head saying; “Don’t speak!”
You shake your head, momentarily removed from the feelings the picture has aroused in you. You stop to take a closer look at it. You’re a little perturbed because you still haven’t a clue as to why you heard that voice in your head? Now you look at their hands. You observe the picture more carefully, and the picture has even a greater story to tell. You can hear her moaning as he kisses her neck. Eventually, you notice his hands. He’s holding her tight, in fact, she might have some bruising on her arms the following morning.
Relax, every man whom I’ve ever shown this picture too, over 95% of them had thoughts very similar to those of yours. It was a picture of passion, intimacy, and love. For most of the women that I had shown the same picture too, they thought it was a dark and cruel portrait. In fact, they were the ones that got it right. Her clenched fists were signs of anger, frustration, and fear. Some women thought that as soon as he loosens his grip, she’d scratch his eyes out. Some even thought she would use the kitchen knife hidden in the shadow just there on her left side and plunge it into his back as soon as he was lying on top of her. This picture happens to be the cover of a book on sexual and physical abuse!
This is only one example of how differently the sex’s views on the world is. Let’s look at who was one of your most important role models. For most men, it would be their father. Much research has been done on this one subject; a man’s relationship with their father. Consider the physiological role that most of what makes us who we are today are what was downloaded unconsciously in the first three to four years of your life. What was the dynamics, the communications like between your parents when you were little? As much work as many of us has done on putting distance between our fathers if we feel that we were not supportive, or loved for who we are by them. We are still taking in information through our parents interjects and that is what is hard-wired into our beings. This process of changing ourselves has to be on a daily basis if we are to integrate, with our well-deserved power points of what kind of man we choose to be.
In every moment man has choice, it is the awareness to do this that one has to strive.
John Shinavier, MA, Life Coach