Men: Please know that this process is so natural to a woman, so much a part of her nature, that she isn’t even aware that it’s going on. In fact, when Melissa read her own Thought Diary, she herself was surprised at how often she was thinking about Joseph. Normally, these thoughts about him just float in and out of her awareness. They’re just a part of how she is when she’s involved in a relationship, a reflection of how, like so many women, she puts love first.
HOW MEN AND WOMEN LOVE DIFFERENTLY
After years of research and personal experience, I’ve concluded that love is experienced very differently by men and by women:
For most women, love is nonstop reality, a consistent awareness that never quite disappears even when we are working or performing tasks that seem to have nothing to do with love. For most men, on the other hand, the experience of love is much more compartmentalized: It is an appointment men make with a part of themselves.
Women don’t have to shift into a loving awareness – they are in it most of the time, whether it’s being expressed or not. On the contrary, most men do have to consciously choose to make a shift into love mode.
Let’s go back for a minute to Brian, my friend who thought his new girlfriend must have psychological problems. This difference we’ve been examining between men and women explains why to Brian and probably to most men, a woman’s focus on him may seem excessive. Brian can’t imagine himself focusing on the relationship as much as Lori does. If he did that, he’d have to block out the rest of his life and consciously concentrate on her. To him, this would feel unbalanced, even obsessive. So he incorrectly assumes that if this is how Lori feels about him, she must be making a huge effort to love him in this manner, and therefore, she must be unbalanced and obsessive.
Many men make this same error in judgment – they see a woman putting love first, and have a hard time relating to it. “If I was behaving that way or feeling that way,” they think to themselves, “it would mean that I didn’t have a life, that I was really needy and desperate.” Then they conclude that their partner must be needy, empty, and insecure to love that much or focus on them that consistently.
Women, however, know better. Lori isn’t making any effort at all. She’s in love, and focusing on Brian is as natural to her as breathing. She doesn’t even think about it – it just happens. It’s the same with Melissa – she isn’t trying to think about Joseph; she isn’t thinking about him because she has a problem, or no life of her own. She is thinking about him because that’s the way she loves as a woman.
The analogy of the Love Pie illustrates how men and women think about their relationship. Here’s a second analogy, one that illustrates how men and women Junction in relationships.
Imagine a man’s consciousness and a woman’s consciousness are like houses, with different rooms for the different areas our mind focuses on in our life – a “work” room; a “body room; a “recreation” room, etc. For most women, every room in the house of her consciousness is also a Love Room, even when it is dedicated to other functions. It’s as if all the space in the house of her consciousness is used for love. It’s a Love House!
For men, however, there is only one Love Room in the house of their mind. Therefore, if the man wants to put his focus on love and the relationship, he consciously has to leave the other rooms and go to his Love Room.
This analogy of the Love Room explains a phenomenon I’ve experienced so often in my own relationships, one I know other women have as well:
I’m with my partner, and I reach out to relate to him in a romantic way, but he doesn’t respond. I know he loves me, so I can’t understand why he seems a little distant. When I ask him if something is wrong, he invariably replies, “No, nothing’s wrong.” I begin to feel frustrated and uncomfortable, because I’m trying to connect with him in an emotional way, but he is not reciprocating.
What’s actually happening in this situation? I am in my Love House, which is full of Love Rooms, and I am relating to my mate in a loving, intimate way, only he is not in his Love Room! Maybe he’s in the Work Room of his mind, and is thinking about a project he needs to complete; maybe he’s in the Money Room of his mind, and is contemplating what to do about his investments; maybe he is in his Relaxing Room watching TV or surfing the Internet on his computer. Suddenly, there I am wanting to relate to him emotionally, which he translates as my wanting him to go to his Love Room, where he can be with me that way. But he doesn’t want to go to his Love Room – he’s busy in some other room of his consciousness.
Of course, if I don’t understand this concept of the Love Room, then I don’t realize that my partner is not available to me emotionally at that moment – it just feels as though he is somehow shutting me out. And here’s the most unfortunate part: Since my partner is not in his Love Room, my attempt to connect emotionally can feel to him as if I’m trying to control him, or tell him what to do.
So, when I say to my mate, “What’s wrong?” it probably feels as if I am actually saying: “Why aren’t you in your Love Room right now? Why can’t you just drop everything and go there so we can be romantic?” This explains the reactions women often get from men – ranging from amusement, mild annoyance, impatience, and irritation all the way up the scale to anger and shutting down – when we try to create an emotional or romantic moment out of the blue. We’re trying to love him; he feels like we’re trying to make him shift out of the state of awareness he is in and drag him into his Love Room!!
Recently my partner and I went on a brief vacation and had a delightful and romantic time. The morning of the day we were leaving, we felt so close, and commented on how wonderful the trip had been. A few hours later, we left for the airport to fly home. After we checked in for our flight, I noticed that my partner seemed to have become a little distant. He wasn’t responding to me in the same way as earlier in the day, and felt kind of far away.
“Is something wrong, darling?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. But something had changed and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I began to feel agitated and worried. What could be going on? I continued to ask him if he was all right during our first flight, and during our wait at the second airport for the connecting flight, and of course the more I tried to get him to talk, the farther and farther away he seemed to go. By the time we got home late that evening, things just felt awful.
The next day, everything was fine again. But I was still perplexed. What had happened during our trip home to create such an upset feeling between us?
Then, it dawned on me. When my mate and I were on vacation at the hotel, it was as if he spent the whole time in the Love Room of his consciousness. He had no work, no obligations, and gladly went to that part of himself where he could connect with me emotionally and romantically. Then we left for home, and without my realizing it, he left his Love Room and moved into his Traveling-on-a-Journey Room, in which he was focused on the logistics of dealing with taxis, airports, crowds, finding gates, etc.
I, too, was paying attention to the details of our trip and went to a more businesslike portion of my awareness. However, being a woman, I brought the Love Room consciousness with me. So there I was snuggling up to him while we waited for the plane, talking about romantic things we’d done on