A marriage counselor might take one side or the other in a disagreement to try to bring about a resolution. It can feel good if she takes your side or really bad if she doesn’t. Either way, one of you is bound to feel defensive.
Intimacy skills teach you how to handle any disagreement without making one of you right and the other one wrong. There’s not much left to fight about when you know how to get your desires met.
“Professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology.”
—Camille Paglia, Social Critic and Professor
Part of learning the Six Intimacy Skills is acknowledging and celebrating how different men are from women. Just as John Gray said, men really are from Mars and women from Venus. It takes some adjusting to get used to the cultural differences between those two planets.
I became acutely aware of this one day at the beach, playing volleyball with friends. Mike had his eight-year-old son Matthew with him, and in between games he asked Matthew, “Do you want to have a race down to the water?”
Matthew’s face lit up. “Yeah!” he said excitedly.
They both crouched like runners at a starting block, and Mike said, “On your marks, get set—” and just as he said, “go!” he shoved his son into the sand and took off running to the water.
My friend Rana and I were both appalled at Mike’s behavior. I couldn’t believe a grown man could do something so mean to a little boy. But my friend Dave thought it was funny, and so did Mike. In fact, so did Matthew. They were all laughing while Rana and I stood there with our mouths hanging open in shock.
All the males thought this was great fun, and all the females thought it was mean. What a great example of how different masculine culture is than feminine culture.
I asked Mike later if he felt that he was teaching his son something important in that moment. He said, “Definitely. I was teaching him that life isn’t fair, and that sometimes it’s more important to have fun than to worry about winning. I was also teaching him to be tough—and how to be a guy with other guys.”
That reminded me that Mike is responsible for teaching Matthew how to be a man. His mother can’t do it, nor can any woman. Only a man can show a boy how to be a man, and this was apparently part of the lesson. Thankfully, now that I have the Six Intimacy Skills, I can appreciate the differences in the male culture where I used to be critical of it and think that I knew better.
A woman could easily witness that interaction and think Mike was jerk. From the perspective of female culture, he was being mean. A woman would never push a little girl like that! I respect Mike a lot, and it still jarred my feminine sensibilities. I wanted to protect Matthew in that moment, but the truth is, Matthew was fine. He was getting initiated into being one of the guys.
Ellen had a similar experience when she saw her husband playing catch with her sons in the front yard. Her husband was throwing the ball too hard, so she ran out to explain to him that he needed to be gentle with them. “They’re still little,” she scolded him, “and they could get hurt.”
Neither her husband nor the boys seemed to appreciate her comments, and it ended the game of catch altogether. But Ellen was sure she was doing the right thing protecting her cubs from their insensitive father.
Then Ellen learned the Six Intimacy Skills.
Later she told me, “I have to rethink everything I thought I knew. It’s not easy to admit, but I think I did the wrong thing that day when they were playing catch. If I want my husband to teach my little boys to be men, I have to let him do it his way. What if other boys throw the ball hard at my sons? My husband was preparing them for that. Plus, they were all having a good time until I inserted myself into the situation and tried to control it, and that was the end of their fun. I was so sure I was right, but there was a high price to pay for interfering with my boys’ relationship with their dad. I wasn’t respectful of his role in their lives.”
In other words, Ellen’s husband was a smart Martian, but that wasn’t immediately obvious from her Venusian perspective.
One reaction I had to the cultural difference between my husband and me was embarrassment. I worried that if other people saw his peculiar (read: masculine) behavior, they would think (as I secretly did) that there was something wrong with him. Looking back, that seems like a remarkably self-righteous point of view, but I didn’t see that at the time. Instead, I saw it as my job to try to mitigate, correct, or soften that peculiar behavior, or at least the appearance of it to the outside world, so that people wouldn’t think my husband was uncivilized.
I’m not the only one. Mandy’s version of this same sensibility was to feel that her husband was lazy and irresponsible for not getting his holiday shopping done early. She’d finished hers more than a month in advance, and he clearly hadn’t even started by then. So she decided to take over his shopping. She even bought her own Christmas present from her husband for herself. She wrapped it and put it under the tree and let him know it was all taken care of—that he’d gotten her something nice for Christmas. That was early on in her marriage, and seven years later she was still buying her own present and putting it under the tree every year, and it didn’t feel very good.
She complained to her mother Liz, “It’s so hurtful. He doesn’t even buy me a Christmas present! I have to do it myself. I really want him to do it, and I just don’t know why he won’t.”
Her mother, well versed in the Six Intimacy Skills, pointed out that Mandy had taught her husband not to get her anything by buying presents for herself for so many years. Liz said that it’s not uncommon for men to go Christmas shopping even right on Christmas Eve. She suggested that shopping at the last minute might even be part of male culture.
Liz suggested that Mandy consider not buying herself a Christmas present this year, but cautioned her that since she was changing the rules, it might mean that she wouldn’t get anything. But Liz said that Mandy would be opening up the space to allow her husband to feel the full responsibility and delight of being able to make his own decisions about what to buy his wife for Christmas.
For the first time, Mandy understood that she had robbed her husband of that pleasure by buying his gifts for him. She felt vulnerable about not buying her own present for the first time, but she also agreed with her mom that there was no other way to get to a place where she would feel desired and cherished. She was going to have to start respecting his choices about gift buying—when it happened and what she received—in order to get the intimacy she was craving.
Mandy decided to apologize to her husband for being disrespectful by controlling the gifts for all those years—not just the one to her, but what he bought for his daughters and other family members as well. She explained that she didn’t want to operate that way anymore and that she was relinquishing the job from there on, starting with deciding what he should get his daughter Brittney for her upcoming birthday. Mandy was nervous and exhilarated telling her husband these things. She didn’t know what would happen. Would she and the girls be disappointed? Or would her husband rise to the occasion and pick out nice presents for them?
A short time later Mandy and her husband were at a jewelry store when he excitedly said, “I’ll get a birthday present for Brittney here!” Mandy got a glimpse of the joy her husband felt about the prospect of getting his little girl a present of his own choosing. He was so happy when he found the perfect bracelet, and Mandy couldn’t believe she had been depriving him of that joy for all these years. It was so moving to see him wanting to express his love for his daughter by getting her a beautiful gift.
“I was so happy for me, for him, and for our daughter that I got tears in my eyes,” Mandy said. “I got out of the way and stopped controlling him, and there was so much more pleasure than I ever imagined when I started buying his presents for him so many years ago. I’ll never do that again, now that I see what it’s been costing all of us. I’m glad I finally trusted my husband.”
I had one wife, Laileh, tell me that there was no way she could respect her husband.
“What could I respect him for?” she asked. “In ten years of marriage, he’s never once taken me on vacation.”
I said, “I hear that you’re disappointed that he’s never taken you on a vacation. I also remember you mentioned that he pays the mortgage, correct?”
“Well, yes—but he has to live somewhere. He lets us live with him, but so what?” Just like that, she dismissed how much her husband contributed to the family by paying the mortgage on their beautiful home in an upscale neighborhood. That’s the biggest bill of all in most households, but to her it was nothing.
I asked, “Didn’t you also tell me that every day after work he calls you and asks what he should bring home for dinner?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And no matter what I say, whether it’s lobster or steak or even SuperMex, which he hates, he will always bring whatever I ask for.”
He was starting to sound like a pretty considerate man to me, but Laileh didn’t agree. “He’s a very selfish man,” she insisted.
“That’s an affirmation,” I told her. “Is that serving you?”
“It’s not an affirmation,” she insisted. “It’s how he is. It’s the truth.”
From the outside, it looked like she was married to a great guy but chose not to focus on that. Instead she was fixated on how he hadn’t taken her on vacation for ten years.
It was clear to me that he likely felt so disrespected around her that he didn’t want to go on vacation together. It would have been too painful for him.
Laileh didn’t know it, but she held the key to getting what she wanted. But even considering my perception of her husband—that he was generous and provided well for her and her daughter—seemed like too much of a stretch for Laileh.
What would you see if you took a stranger’s perception of your husband or looked at him with fresh eyes, as though you were seeing him for the very first time? What qualities do you think a stranger would appreciate or admire about him?
I can understand Laileh’s dilemma. When I thought my husband was lazy, I believed my perception was the truth too. I had all kinds of evidence, because that was what I focused on. However, once I started treating him with respect and looking at him through new eyes, I saw a really hard-working, responsible, accomplished guy. And I discovered that I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.
Today I don’t think my husband is lazy at all. And the only thing that changed was my perspective and my attitude. Once that changed, my husband responded to me with much more generosity, playfulness, and tenderness, just the way I wanted him to.
Now that I realize how smart he is, I look for opportunities to take his advice. Almost every day, I waltz from my home office into his home office and ask him to solve a problem for me, and most of the time he does. He suggests a course of action, or fixes the printer again, or sometimes suggests a different person to get advice from on a particular topic. Often he makes a suggestion that is clearly wise, and I’ll think, “Oh, of course. That’s it!” He brings another perspective, or he just sees something I don’t.
Sometimes he just listens and comforts or acknowledges me. Sometimes he volunteers to complete a task that will ease my challenges. Not only is he insightful and wise, he’s always got my back and cares deeply about my happiness. What an amazing resource! But I hardly ever relied on him before I learned the Six Intimacy Skills. Now I ask to “borrow his brain” all the time. I feel less alone, and he feels useful and helpful. We both love it.
Another benefit to changing your perspective and focusing on the ways your husband is smart, capable, and competent is that it’s going to improve the prosperity at your house.
When your husband looks into your eyes and sees reflected back that you think he’s a loser, that drains his self-esteem. If you reinforce that you think he’s stupid with your words, he brings that low self-esteem with him out into the world. That will negatively affect his performance at work and in other aspects of his life as well.
However, if he looks into your eyes and sees that you think he’s smart, capable, and competent, that will affect his self-worth in a positive way. If the woman who knows him best in the world believes he’s wise and has good judgment, he will be that kind of man. He’ll see the evidence of your opinion every day, every time you tell him, “Whatever you think—I trust you” or “That was a good idea. Thank you for taking care of that.” All those things reinforce his sense of high self-worth and help him perform better in all aspects of his life.
We hear all the time that when women become more respectful, their husbands come home with raises and promotions. That was true with Renee’s husband, who kept getting one promotion after another when she started practicing the Six Intimacy Skills. We also see a lot of husbands starting their own companies once their wives trust them to take that kind of risk.
I heard a businessman talking about how he got an offer to sell his company for several million dollars when he was still getting it off the ground. He told his wife about it, and she said, “Don’t you trust yourself to keep growing your business? I certainly trust you.” He decided to hold on to his company, and later he was able to sell it for more than twenty times that first offer. Her confidence in him resulted in a lot of prosperity for their family.
I also read about a football player with a long career in the NFL who said he avoided getting injured because he knew his wife trusted him out on the field. He was sure that her belief in him actually kept him safe during the game.
That’s a remarkable thing to say, but I think I know what he means. The people we surround ourselves with contribute greatly to our perception of ourselves. Everyone around us is a mirror in some way. That football player’s wife was mirroring her confidence in his ability to keep himself safe, and so he did.
If you’re not feeling confident that your husband is smart, capable, and competent right now, it’s okay to fake it until you make it. Just be sure to act as if he is all those things while you’re gathering your evidence. Gathering evidence can be a very powerful way to bring that vision into reality, and it will lead to enjoying the connection you crave.