His Moments of Silence

This is from Kara Oh, author of "Men Made Easy":

If you have never read Men Made Easy, or if you haven't read it for a
while, you might want to be reminded about what you need to do to get
him to open up...just in case it isn't a habit yet. It has to do with
honoring his "moments of silence." I got an email from a woman who
was asking how to get a new man to talk more. Here's my response:

The best thing to do with a quiet man is to follow his lead for a
while. When you do ask questions, make them not too personal. Find
out what his interests are, then ask questions about those. A
question like, "What do you enjoy best about..." will get him to talk
about his feelings, but in a non-threatening way.

One of the things in my book, which is not even a secret, is how to
get a man to open up. One thing women do too often to men is cut
them off. That's the way we women interact, but men don't do very
well with it. When you ask a question, often, there will be what I call a
"moment of silence." That's when he's gathering his thoughts. And there will
often be several throughout his response, if you give him the
opportunity. Women use those moments to jump in, which never gives
him a chance.

After you ask a question, allow any and all moments of
silence to hang. If you give him time to gather his thoughts, each
time he'll become more and more trusting that you aren't going to
interrupt him. He may surprise himself with what he reveals, because
you have given him the opportunity to feel safe enough to do so.

This technique is laid out in greater detail in the book but this is
enough to get you started. I hope it helps. If you haven't been doing
this technique, give it a try and see what happens. I do this for
Chris and he tells me all the time that I'm the first woman who has
ever seen who he really is, and he is blown away by what good
communication we have. Mostly, I'm a good listener. You can be too.
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For more information about Kara's great book click here.

coach@man2woman.net

Doing Things For Others

"Hi my problem is that my boyfriend always thinks he needs to do stuff for his women friends.I have men friends and i don't do anything for then because i don't want to disrepect him in anyway possible"

Our mothers tried to raise us to be that way, the way THEY think men should be toward women. Society also influences us to be helpful to women. Come to think of it, all the self-improvement books I've read tell us we should do things for other people with no expectation of anything in return if we want to be happy.

If you want to be happy, go ahead and do helpful things for other men you know. I don't think it's disrespectful toward your boyfriend and if he thinks it is, then that's HIS problem.

I'm in a 12 step program and one thing I learned both there and in some pretty good self-improvement books is if I get upset about something someone else says or does, I'M the one at fault. It's what's going on inside ME, not them, that causes my discomfort. It's my reaction to the world around me, not the world around me, that makes me uncomfortable.

I'm re-reading a fun little book someone gave me years ago, back in a time when I wasn't ready to accept anything anyone else said unless they agreed with me. And I thought all this stuff about how to be happy was a bunch of caca. Well, NOW I find the book enjoyable and enlightening. It's called simply: "Being Happy" by Andrew Mathews. Andrew is a cartoonist, along with being a writer and speaker, so the book has some cute cartoons in it to illustrate his points. If you can find it, buy it!

I'm going to pass on something I've read more than once, this comment regarding the message quoted above that started this post. Notice how this lady ("anonymous" was the only name on her comment) doesn't capitalize "i" except when it's beginning a sentence? I've been told by experts that's a sign of low self-esteem or self-respect. Like when a person does that it's because they don't think they're worthy of a capital "I". I always thought it was just that the person is too lazy to hit the shift key! Maybe it's a combination: the person doesn't consider him/herself worth his/her OWN effort!

Comments welcome. Or email me at coach@man2woman.net

Sexual Strategies

Sexual Strategies
by Elena Solomon
author of 12 Simple Rules

Have you ever thought WHY men's and women's sexual strategies are so different?

- Why men want sex and women want love?
- Why there are NO books teaching women how to get one-night stands?
- Why women complain about men not loving them enough - but refusing to make love?

If you've ever been frustrated with the opposite gender, I feel for you. I've been there, too. In fact, for nearly two decades of my life I was completely clueless on what was going on between men and women - with disastrous results.

Then I decided I'd had enough and I wanted to learn what the other gender was REALLY looking for and HOW one could master that. In short, I wanted to know what makes men and women tick.

This is what I learned and what every man and woman must know.
Our sexual strategies are deeply imprinted in our SUBCONSCIOUS.
We cannot CHANGE what is there.
We cannot CHOOSE whom we feel attracted to.
We just FEEL it.

Why?

Because, from Mother Nature's point of view, the purpose of life is LIFE itself. It's procreation. In other words, to keep the human race thriving, men and women should have sex and have children.

To make men and women have sex Mother Nature created a mechanism, which drives males and females towards one another. This mechanism is what we routinely call LOVE, or attraction.

Attraction is actually a cocktail of certain hormones generated in our bodies in the presence of someone who appears to be good genes - in other words, a person of the opposite gender who seems to have the capacity of producing a healthy offspring that will survive.

Those hormones make us feel euphoric and excited, and we feel an enormous urge to get in close contact with the person we are attracted to.

This is really what love is all about. It's just the means of making us have sex with each other and make babies.

All those poems about the wonders of love are written about the condition of a human being under the influence of a powerful mix of natural drugs.

And yes, it hits high!
Anyone who's been in love can confirm that.

The thing you must understand is that this process is COMPLETELY UNCONTROLLABLE.

We cannot CHOOSE who we fall in love with.

This is because the purpose of procreation is so important that Mother Nature cannot rely on our recently developed intellectual capacities to make the right choice. Instead, it uses the wisdom of generations BEFORE us to make the choice FOR us. The mechanism of sexual attraction is firmly imprinted in our GENETIC MEMORY.

We are attracted to certain patterns of behavior and physical characteristics. When we come across those patterns in real life, we feel attraction to this person - and we cannot help it.

With all advances in modern science and birth control, we still have the same biological hardware as our pre-historical ancestors. Scientists say that we have the same bodies as our forebears some 50,000 years ago.

It means that when you fall in love (or lust), you do it the same way as cavemen and cavewomen did. You simply FEEL it. You cannot CONVINCE yourself to fall in love – you either feel it, or not.

So, why do men and women use such different sexual strategies?
Why do men want sex and women want love?
Because men and women ARE different.

Not better or worse, but different.

A man can produce a child every time he has sex, and a woman can only produce a child only every second year or so.

So for a man, there are no adverse consequences for having sex with as many women as he wants - the more children he produces, the higher his chance to procreate.

For a woman, it's different. She needs to be selective to secure the best genes for her child. If she makes a wrong choice and falls pregnant from a man with bad genes, her offspring may not survive into adulthood. And she can only produce about 10 children during her lifetime.

This is why men's and women's sexual strategies are so different.

Men seek quantity; women seek quality.
Men seek abundance of sex, women - abundance of admirers.

This is absolutely NATURAL.

This is the reason why you are here today and alive – because your ancestors, men and women, acted true to their natural aspirations. Millions of dead ends of your species vanished into oblivion – and every single one of YOUR ancestors managed to find a sexual partner and produce an offspring that survived into adulthood.

- If your female ancestors weren't picky, you wouldn't be here today.
- If your male ancestors weren't trying to get laid at every opportunity, you might as well never be born.

STOP whining about the tricks of the opposite gender.

The battle of the sexes is the battle for the survival of HUMANITY.

We are made this way.
Accept it.

And learn to use it to your advantage!
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To learn more about Elena Solomon and her ebook "12 Simple Rules" click here.