Everybody wants to be loved for who they really are

Most of the images we have of love and romance come from movies, television and romance novels. They’re all about pursuit and capture, dominance and submission. Once the guy gets the girl, the movie ends. That leaves us with a considerably incomplete picture of love as it is in the real world. Love is much more than just an experience of beginnings.

Sherven and Sniechowski point out that our culture has a rather poor and adolescent understanding of what love is and what it takes to create real love. At the start of the relationship, we are swept away by emotions and fantasies and expect the other person to fulfill them. When those expectations aren’t met and we begin to see the imperfections and differences in our partner, we walk away. We search for the “perfect” partner, not knowing that he/she can never be enough because he/she will always be different from what we expect.

The beautiful thing about a romantic relationship is that love isn’t found – it is co-created. Yet there are countless people who search for love as if it belongs to someone else. We don’t find love. We find one another and allow love to grow between us.

“That don’t impress me much!”

Many of us go on a date with the intention of impressing the other person. A man might lease a car that he can’t afford in order to impress a woman while a woman might completely give herself a makeover. Instead of the goal of the date being, “I want us to get to know each other for real and see if we like each other,” it is more often, “I want to impress you.”

Sherven and Sniechowski point out that if we go out on a first date and put on a show, we are working against emotional intimacy because all that the other person is getting is a false front. Ultimately, that illusion will come apart because it can’t be kept up forever. What follows, is resentment and disappointment that is unnecessary if things are done simply and straightforwardly.

If two people are truly interested in one another and want to go out with each other, the authors recommend that they do things like going out for coffee or to other places that are not romantic. That way they can begin to get an idea of who the other person is instead of witnessing the show that both of them are putting on. If they do this a few times before anything more extravagant occurs, they can find out whether or not it’s worth going forward without expending emotional energy and finances on a process that eventually leads to nothing.

Ultimately we cannot control whether or not someone will be impressed by us because it is their choice. So it’s better to be real instead of setting out to impress someone. Our actions often reflect our self-esteem. Sherven gives us something to think about when she says, “If your focus is on impressing the other person, then you are voting for the belief that you are not good enough as you are. The rejection process has already started, and it has started from within.”

Expectations can be limiting

As the relationship progresses past the “honeymoon” stage, some of the masks we initially wore begin to come off. We soon discover that we carry several unrealistic expectations that can prevent us from getting to know the other person for who they really are. It is better to let our partner be him/herself and see what happens.

One of the major expectations that women often bring into the relationship is that the man is going to bring the substance that she’s searching for – the money, social connections, adventure and romance. But when the relationship finds more solid footing, she realizes he’s just another human being like she is. He can only provide who he is.

Unfortunately, many women who are not satisfied in their own personal lives look to the man to fix it, and he can’t. Even if the man actually sets out to fulfill those fantasies, it is an impossible task. Her expectations and his attempt to fulfill them doom the relationship right from the beginning. He cannot be authentic if he is acting according to stereotypes or another person’s ideas of who he should be. She will never be happy in the relationship until she accepts him for who is, not who she thinks he should be.

Differences are an opportunity to grow

The importance of partnership comes sharply into focus when there is a conflict. It is inevitable that two people living in the pressure cooker of a long-term relationship are going to crash into each other at some point. They are going to be disappointed in one another, irritated by one another, disillusioned or angered by one another. Many people believe that those conflicts are signs that the relationship is off track. But what drives a relationship off track is not conflict but the inability to handle conflict.

A classic example of this would be of a couple where one person is a spender and the other person is a saver. Although the difference is usually seen as a bad thing, the fact is that they’re both out of balance. They have taken their approach to money and finances to an extreme in one direction. What lies before them is the opportunity to learn from each other how to handle money in a much more balanced and respectful manner while working together as a team and relying on each other’s strengths. They can create a true partnership out of the differences.

A couple’s love is tested through conflict and when they emerge from that still wanting to be together, they have proved that differences can be a good thing. Although many of us have the notion that differences are a dreadful thing, they actually open the way to true intimacy. They give us the opportunity to value how different we are from the one we love and use those differences to grow and change.

“One of the most beneficial things you can do in a relationship is to recognize that your partner is not you! When you really understand that, you won’t try to change them into what you think he/she should be and you will get to know them intimately for who they were created to be. Remember, there are two people involved. It’s a relationship – not a dictatorship!” say Sherven and Sniechowski.

Curiosity is a powerful tool in a relationship because it means staying open and wanting to know more about the other person. Because of our self-involvement, we often end up missing out on all that an intimate relationship has to offer. When we look at it one way – our way – we miss it when it appears.

We need to love others for who they are if we desire to be loved in the same way. As two people look deeper and deeper into the relationship, they will find that the emotional intimacy between them expands so that there is more room for both of them. And remember that if you’re not being loved for who you really are, you’re not being loved at all.

Traditionally, when couples fight,

With commitment, courage, and the willingness to exchange stale, unconscious behavior patterns for fresh, healthy choices, you can learn how to transform the differences into catalysts for growth, instead of fodder for heartache. Based on the principles of The New Intimacy differences between partners can make lovers out of adversaries.

“Conscious Creativity” — a nine step process to working through conflict rather than running away from it – is one of the techniques Judith and Jim advise practicing. Your goal is to co-create and discover a new way of being together, a resolution that satisfies both of you. Therefore, each of you need to speak your half of the problem and listen respectfully and with genuine curiosity to your partner’s point of view.

1. Define the issue – truthfully express what is disturbing you in as much detail as possible.
2. Feel your feelings – experience and communicate your feelings as honestly and openly as you can in the moment you are feeling them.
3. Remember that you care – keep in mind that ongoing relationships are a mosaic made up of many facets, and there is more to your partner and your relationship than any one issue.
4. Beware of self-sabotage – stay aware of what’s going on inside you during a rough spot in the relationship, don’t allow old negative behavior patterns to swamp the present moment.
5. Change your mind – open yourself to the fact that any issue can be understood and interpreted in a variety of ways, otherwise you’ll continue to stay in a rut and progressively dig the hole deeper with every conflict.
6. Take personal responsibility – ask yourself in what way or ways do you contribute to the situation that upsets you. Rarely if ever in an ongoing relationship does a difficulty arise that has not been contributed to by both partners.
7. Remember that your partner is not you – learn to internalize and understand that your partner is not you. Your resolutions will be respectful of your differences only when you both find ways to empathize with the other’s point of view.
8. Be consciously creative – hold the other in your consciousness as you want to be held. Appreciate and value the other’s experience in the ways that it is different from yours.
9. Seek both/ and solutions – as you seek a resolution, remember that you are two different people, and the resolution needs to reveal not an either/ or but a both/ and quality. Resolutions aren’t about winning, they’re about a process of respect and intimacy, growth and emergence.

Guard against the very dangerous belief that if you’re having difficulty with your partner, that means your relationship is in trouble. More than likely it means your relationship needs a tune-up and an oil change. Only in romantic fantasy does everything go smoothly without attention, care and change.

To hear many relationship “experts” tell it, men are still stuck in primitive, caveman mentality.

But these experts never say how true love and real romance are created and kept alive once the marriage vows have been taken. What does a man do with pursuit and capture once the pursuit is over and the capture is complete? Instead these “experts” teach that the best a woman can expect from her man is a form of role playing and, at best, compromise.

Tough guy no longer

While this may still be the case for some men who were raised by brutish fathers and needy mothers, our experience over the past eighteen years suggests just the opposite. We’ve spent a lot of time counseling couples of all ages, giving relationship workshops of all kinds, and running dozens of gender reconciliation seminars privately and for corporations. When given a safe environment to express themselves, men have voiced, over and over, their objection to being boxed into the old tough-guy stereotype. They express how burdened they feel by their wives and girlfriends who expect them to always be in charge.

And these men, from all walks of life, repeatedly ask that women take a more active and responsible role during dating and marriage.

As one man said to a large group in Melbourne, Australia, “Women expect me to read their minds. But I can’t. Yet I’m made wrong if I ask for their input.” Many men in the audience laughed in recognition and applauded their compatriot’s honesty, while numerous women giggled in guilty acknowledgment. In Detroit, a lighting technician for a television interview we did shared a recent experience he had had with his wife. “She’s always saying she wants me to be more emotional. But then when I told her I was feeling anxious that I might lose my job, she told me she didn’t want to hear about it, that I should just deal with it and not upset her.”

Yes, men are fearful of women

The fact is that men are human too. They feel deeply, they care passionately, and they want to be respected, and loved. And, as so many men have shared with us, they become self-conscious and fearful of opening themselves and expressing their truth if they’re not sure women will acknowledge and respect them for their full range and depth of human experience.

You see, men are eager to share themselves with women, but only when they can feel safe that their inner reality will be valued and treated with care. Otherwise, yes, men will retreat from the threat of women’s contempt or rejection. But otherwise, men want very much to have adult-to-adult relationships with women rather than acting out the pretense of Knight in Shining Armor with the Damsel in Distress who needs to be rescued from danger in order to feel loved and made whole.

But the roles that men have been expected to play have been very limited. Only recently have men been allowed to participate in the births of their children. Only recently have men been able to make the choice to be house-husbands, staying home to care for the children while their more ambitious wives go to work—without becoming the butt of jokes and mocked by friends. And only recently have men begun to actively participate in planning their own weddings.

When he’s only an onlooker

Think about it. Women want active marriage partners, yet they’ve traditionally left their fiances in the dark while they went off with their mothers to plan every last detail of the wedding, reception, and often the honeymoon. What happened to the strong, brave knight? He’s been reduced to an onlooker who’s often cast out of the wedding planning entirely by the mother of his bride. So where would this husband-to-be learn that his input, his expertise, his participation is wanted and needed by the woman who says she loves and needs him?

No surprise then that so many men start off their marriages feeling like accessories, not nearly what their new wives had in mind. They learned their sideline role very well. So when they retreat to their computer, the newspaper, or Monday Night Football, they are only continuing to leave all the action and responsibility to their wives just as they learned during the wedding preparation process.

The magic of our differences

We’d all prefer, men and women alike, to be respected and valued for who we really are, free from the old limitations and role-playing. And that’s happening more and more as men and women open themselves to bridge the age-old divide between them. We call it the magic of differences, made possible by genuine curiosity and sincere listening to know the human truth beyond the old cliches about “all any woman wants is . . .”, and “that’s how men are”.

That’s why we wrote our latest book, The Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams: Planning Together for Less Stress and More Joy. We see now that more men, upwards of 40% of new grooms, are bridging the gender gap by involving themselves in the entire wedding journey—from engagement through the honeymoon. However, while there are countless books for the bride, our book is the only one written to support the wedding couple.

As one groom told us, when we interviewed him for our book, “It’s about time we men got a little press.” He was eager to tell us about his experience as a full partner with his fiancee in planning their wedding. He was aware that often no one listens to what men want, feel, and think about their weddings, their children, and their marriages. Then women are baffled by how men act, how men shut down and won’t talk, how eager men can be to hang out with their guy friends. Well, why not if what men learn is that they’re responsible for pursuit and capture but during the wedding journey their input and participation is considered a nuisance, not at all valuable.

It is only when we remember that men are human that we open the door to spiritual equality, relating as partners, making ourselves available for deeper emotional intimacy, more trustworthy and romantic love. Only then is the path available to create far more fulfilling relationships, the kind we all truly want.

You may have found yourself complaining that no matter what you do for your woman, it’s never good enough. We’ve heard that from single men, married men, men of all ages. Yet, all too often, no matter what men may do for women, a crucial element is missing.

At the heart of what a man needs to know about a woman is that she wants, even needs to feel special. Special for being who she really is, special in the eyes of the man she loves. But, what exactly does feeling special mean?

Men have told us over and over that what they find maddening is that feeling special means something different for each woman. They say, “If I only knew what she meant, I’d do it. I’d be it. I’d buy it. Whatever.” While that would make things easy, romance and marriage would suffer terribly as a result, because that kind of doing, being, buying would just be a performance.

So what does special mean?

To help make the meaning of “being special” clear, we first want to ask you a question. Do you like it when a woman assumes things about you? Probably, if what she assumes aligns with what you think about yourself. But what if it doesn’t? Then what? Wouldn’t you want to correct her misperception, her misunderstanding? Yet you know darn well that you could correct her, but if she wasn’t willing to be curious about you, didn’t genuinely want to know who you are, then nothing would change.

So, in reverse, curiosity is crucial to your woman feeling special.

Think about it, are you sincerely curious about the woman you are with–or, for that matter, women in general? Are you as curious about your wife (or your date) as you are about other things in your life? Do you want to know who she is, especially when you don’t understand her?

Here’s an even more basic question. Do you know how to be curious about her? Sure, you’ve got to ask questions. But do you really want to hear the answers? Do you take the time and care to sincerely listen? Listening doesn’t mean paying attention to your response. Listening that lets her know she’s special requires that you take in what she thinks and feels and then letting her know that you really heard her.

Here’s a key

A key to remember that will deepen and sweeten your relationship is that the woman you are with is not you. Simple enough, right? After all, you’re a man and she’s a woman. What could be more obvious? Unfortunately, in many many relationships, that’s as far as it goes.

Far more important is that she is a unique person in her own right, different from all other women. Don’t lump her into a Mars/Venus muddle. That just makes her like every other female, and that’s a sure fire recipe for more disappointment and misunderstanding.

She is not every other woman. She is who she is, uniquely one-of-a-kind and, in that way, very special. You don’t have to do anything to make her special. She already is. But if you can’t recognize that reality as the baseline for how you relate to her, then no gift, no card, no expensive night out will ever make a difference. In fact, it will only dig a much deeper gulf between you.

Remember, she’s not you. Find out who she is.

Not for you but with you

In our workshops we ask couples to do a basic exercise. They sit across from each other and take turns expressing what they love about their partner. What we usually hear follows a predictable pattern.

He’ll say something like: “I love you because I feel good being with you.” Or, “I love you because you turn me on.” Or, “I love you because you make me laugh.” Can you see the problem? These are not about her. They are about him. He feels good. He’s turned on. He laughs.

What if he said: “I love you because you are so insightful. You really have a gift for seeing things in people.” Or, I love you because you’re so adventurous. You really are bold.” Or, “Your sense of color makes what you wear really compliment who you are.” These are about her. And when she knows you care enough to notice, she will feel special.

Sure, her insight may impress you, and being impressed is about you. The same is true for the kick you get out of her willingness to try things, or how proud you feel when you’re out with her. But if you can’t tell her about her in her own right, then it’s only about you and that’s a drag.

Remember. She’s not there for you. She’s there with you.

Learning from her

Your woman also wants to know that she is someone you are willing and wanting to learn from. If you admire her point of view on things, the way she formulates her experience of being alive, her thoughts and opinions, she will feel that you are equals. It’s not only that you care for her, but that you value her even if you weren’t together. So it’s not just your relationship that makes her attractive. She’s attractive to you as a person. Period.

One of our favorite stories was told to us by a woman in New York City. She accepted a first date with a man who took her to a very up-scale restaurant. He was good looking, dressed well, and understood wines–maybe a catch.

However, during the two hours they spent together, he never asked her one question. She knew about wines. Tried to tell him. Nothing got through. She was up on politics. Didn’t matter. She was even a die-hard Yankees fan. So what. The whole evening was about him.

Before the main course was served, she placed thirty dollars on the table, told him, kindly, that it wasn’t working out, took a cab home, and spent the rest of the evening reading a novel she was thoroughly enjoying.

There was nothing he could learn. And, other than sex, it’s a wonder he even went out with anyone.

Real intimacy

Most people associate the word intimacy with sex. But real intimacy is so much more than that. It’s about being open, sincerely wanting to know about, understand, learn from, care for, enjoy, like, and love the person you’re with–for who she really is. That’s why we’re so passionate in our new book, The Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams, about the groom being fully involved with the bride in planning their wedding. But no matter the occasion, or even at the end of the day, don’t miss out on being emotionally intimate with the woman you love.

Of course, your woman has to receive and value what you give her. And she must reciprocate, because there’s no such thing as one-way intimacy.

So offering genuine emotional intimacy, the real thing, is the foundation of treating your woman as special. That’s how she’ll know you really care about her. And so will you.

Used by permission.