Through the ages, humans have craved connection. We seek out those who are friends. We pursue those romantic interests. As a whole humans have yet to change in what we want. And the primary. The result we want from any relationship is some type of connection.
We have special connections with friends. We have special connections with family. And we have special connections with our romantic interests.
Oddly enough, these connections have their struggles and barriers that we have to overcome. We struggle with each of these types of connections from the first grunt that was to mean I love you to today we fight for connection. Yet our greatest gift from God also gets in our way. That is what makes humans so darn messy and lovable. Those are our emotions.
Why we struggle to relate
Our emotions are created by our thoughts. Those thoughts are often very unintentional when they show up for our circumstances. And I thought about those circumstances that vary from person to person because we’ve all had our own experiences that are different from those around us.
The key to those emotions is our thoughts and when we are talking about our relationships with our wives, we’re making it even bigger differentiations. You see even though society today wants to say, that men and women are interchangeable we are in fact not. And the biggest example of this is how we look at the world. If we have say a problem in our travels. Are creatures of action while women are creatures of communication. Neither one is wrong. It’s just we approach the problem from two different angles.
This is why married couples are so wonderful because they can recognize when it’s time to talk and when it’s time to take action. The husband often is the one who goes outside and works in the yard and takes care of the heavy lifting. While women Often stay inside, talk nurture, and raise the children. It’s not because women can’t mow the lawn, but they help develop the child’s communication more than the husband. Dad is there to help the kids burn off energy with roughhousing and play while mom is there to cuddle and kiss boo-boos.
When there are life-altering choices The couple will fall into their needed roles. The husband will take action while the wife talks. This is why when men are lost. They try to find a solution while the wife wants us to ask for directions. It has nothing to do with pride or ego it’s just there is more action being done in Driving and figuring out the problem.
What we make emotions mean
The big problem that we run into as a couple is those darn emotions. And it’s not that we are having the emotions that are the problem. It’s the fact that we make those emotions mean something that causes all the mess. We make our spouse’s emotions mean something personal to us.
But our wives have their motions, and they express them in a completely different manner than how men express their emotions.
You see, we hear all the time that men need to express their emotions more. However, I wanna pose the question what if men already do express their emotions plenty of times? As a matter of fact, often we get into trouble when we express our emotions. Why is that? Because it’s not the emotion that the woman wants to see.
This is why men need a band of Brothers so that they can express negative emotions and positive emotions at the proper times.
Women don’t want negative emotions from their men. What they want is for men to validate their emotions. When you agree that your wife is rightfully mad because Susie didn’t call her back. That is the type of emotional connection. She claims she wants from her man. It’s not that she wants Her man to come in and start talking about how rough his day was and talk about how rude Robert was at the meeting. When he starts talking about that, the wife will often space out or completely block. The words being said. So they don’t register at all.
While men share their emotions, they also partake in the needed actions to fix whatever the problem at hand is. If the toilet stopped up well yeah they’re a little perturbed. They’re mad about the fact that they have to take time out of their relaxation to unclog the toilet. And so guys will grumble they will kind of stomp around. They move a little faster because they’re irritated at the circumstance, while women will take the time to call up their girlfriend and complain about the problem before she calls a plumber to fix the fix the toilet.
Neither solution is wrong. You still get it fixed toilet in the end, but both sets of emotions that are tied to it are expressed in two completely different manners.
Women’s Emotions
Anytime a woman is upset. She wants to have her emotions validated the more you’re able to validate her emotions. The more connected she feels. This is how she interacts with her girlfriends if you ever have a chance to sit and listen to your wife, talk with her girlfriends you’ll see that many times They do a lot of talking and sharing of thoughts, but for a guy, there’s no action. This is because women process their emotions through talking. Using communication with those close to them, helps them to process their thoughts and their emotions and get those solutions figured out at a later date.
Men’s Emotions
Men, on the other hand, are doers. If we are in a situation that requires aggression we are readily able to tap into that emotion at the drop of a hat. This is so that we can provide the protection our family needs. If we had to stand around and talk to our guy friends For 10-15 minutes and validate, whether or not we were in the right to be angry and turn on our aggression our wives are to be raped. Our kids would be killed and half of our house would be cleared out. This doesn’t serve the family. So men are built for action.
Find the questions that will open her heart.
Would you like a jump start on questions you could ask your spouse? Priming the pump of questions that you could ask while at a restaurant or sitting on the couch together?
Yes, we get angry when things don’t go our way so do women. But the big difference is how we express that anger. Feminists think that they can run up to those that they deem to offend them and quickly realize that there is a huge difference between men and women. Why men are bigger why men are stronger and why a woman hitting a guy doesn’t affect him nearly as much as another guy. Because we would see an aggressive. doesn’t affect him nearly as much as another guy. Because we would see an aggressive man as a danger.
How to Have the needed connection
Now we both have all the same types of emotions. As you stated, the difference is how we express our emotions to other people. Because we express our emotions differently we often miss Reed the cues for my partner. Our wife may see us come in and sit down and not say anything meaning that we are angry And in reality, we’re just unwinding. While our wife starts talking about what needs to be done in the house and we interpret that as being nagging. While in reality, she’s just trying to make plans as to what is going to get done this weekend.
The secret to keeping the connection and stop flying off the handle isn’t easy because it takes a means of thinking about it, but when you understand what’s going on the doors to a better connection start to open.
When it comes to your wife, understand that what she is talking about can fit into a couple of compartments. It is she’s afraid or she is lonely. So most of the time when she is coming at you for something that you’re doing or not doing it’s because she’s telling herself stories that either she’s gonna be left behind or she’s gonna be denied resources. These are the two big reasons that she’s afraid when she is lonely she’s gonna come to you with discussions of why we don’t go out anymore or you never tell her she’s beautiful anymore or we never do anything exciting anymore. Though she speaks an absolute she’s just saying I’m lonely. Can you pay attention to me a little bit And when you can read that and recite what her actual emotion is she starts to feel heard.
As I met you, this isn’t easy because we guys take nagging as meaning that we have failed someplace in our duties. So we start becoming consumed with shame and guilt, which is a very powerless feeling and so as it means for us to feel like we have a little control again we get angry. We start to yell back. This separates the connection on our side as much as it separates the connection on our wife’s side.
This is why having intentional thoughts helps. When we can have thoughts in the present, we can come up with good questions to come to understand our wife better.
When we can understand our wife better and we can understand where she is coming from we are able to understand her emotions better. But to be able to do that we have to be able to acknowledge that she is feeling something.
