“I had just talked to you when I arrived, and after dinner I was exhausted and just collapsed into bed,” he answers, his voice expressing bewilderment that you are upset at all. “And this morning I was focused on getting ready for my meeting. Then I went from one event to another. I figured we would talk sometime today.”
You try to explain why you were so agitated at not hearing from him, but it doesn’t come out right, and you’re afraid you sound too desperate and clingy. Your husband listens, and you know by his response that he is annoyed. “Do I have to check in with you every five minutes?” he says sharply “Why do you fall apart just because I don’t call you for twenty-four hours?”
The conversation ends on a bad note, and when you hang up the phone, you feel awful. All you had wanted to do was let him know how much you missed him. Why couldn’t he understand how worried you’d been? Was it that unreasonable for you to have been concerned when he didn’t call or answer his phone? Or could it be that he was right: “Is something wrong with me?” you wonder. “Am I really too needy?”
Most women reading these stories will resonate with the experiences and emotions described because, whether to a lesser or greater extent, we’ve all had these feelings at one time or another. We wonder if our reactions to our partner are justified or if they are overreactions. We question whether our needs are legitimate or excessive. “Am I normal?” we ask ourselves.
As for men, well, I suspect that many of you reading these stories will probably have a very different response, something like: “Here are three perfect examples of the way women overreact and drive men nuts!” And you’re right – these scenarios are typical of the kinds of things women do and feel that men simply don’t understand, and therefore, often categorize as undesirable female behavior.
It is easy to condemn something when we don’t understand it. When not seen with eyes of wisdom and deep comprehension, a woman’s unique and beautiful characteristics can appear as something else not so beautiful to men, and even to ourselves. But when you learn the inner secrets of a woman’s nature, suddenly what appeared to be confusing becomes clear, what seemed unacceptable becomes appreciated, what was challenging becomes endearing.
When I prepared to write this section of the book, my goal was simple. I was looking for a few basic truths about who women are that would help us and the men we love understand our feelings and our behavior. In my research I asked women:
“What are the things you want the man you love to understand about you as a woman at the deepest level of your being?”
“What do you need to explain to your partner about your female nature that is very basic to you, yet, you suspect, so different from the way he experiences the world as a man?”
In the chapters that follow, I’ve done my best to summarize these basics about who women are, why we are that way, and what we want men to know about loving us. The first few chapters focus on three characteristics, the ones I believe are essential to understand in order to truly understand women. So much of why women do what we do, feel what we feel, and say what we say has its source in these truths. They are:
THE THREE BASIC TRUTHS ABOUT WOMEN
1. Women put love first.
2. Women are creators.
3. Women have a sacred relationship with time.
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 present the three secret needs every woman has as a once-and-for-all response to men’s question: “Is there really something I can do that will make her stop complaining and be happy?” (Yes, there is!) And finally, Chapter 7 details “Seven Myths Men Believe About Women and Why They Are Absolutely Wrong”!
A few months ago, a male friend I hadn’t heard from in a while called to tell me he was in a new relationship with a woman he’d been seeing for six months. Brian had dated a lot in his life but had never really been seriously involved with anyone, so this was big news. I asked him how it was going, and he answered that things were great, but he had some concerns about his girlfriend.
“What kind of concerns?” I asked him.
“Well, Lori is really terrific, very sweet and affectionate,” he began, “but I’m worried that something’s wrong with her, like maybe she has psychological problems. That’s why I am calling you – to get your feedback.”
“Tell me what she does that makes you think she has psychological problems,” I prompted him.
“To begin with, she says she thinks about me all the time; she calls me during the day just to tell me she misses me; she plans special things for us to do weeks in advance; and she always wants to talk about us and how well we get along. Then last week,” he continued in a very serious voice, “she told me that our relationship is the most important thing in her life!”
“And what do you conclude from all of this?” I asked him, trying to hide the fact that I was smiling on the other end of the phone.
“Well, if she’s so focused on me like that, I think she obviously must be neurotic and insecure.”
“No, dear,” I said to my friend with a chuckle, “she must be a woman in love.”
My friend Brian is a good guy – but he’s a guy. He didn’t have a lot of experience being in long-term relationships, and the way Lori was loving him seemed strange to him, even unhealthy, because he didn’t understand the first secret about who women are: The world of women is a world of love. To love, to be devoted, to cherish intimate relationships is our nature.
What Women Want Men to Know: Women put love first.
When I say women put love first, I don’t mean women choose to make love and relationships a priority – these things just are a priority in our awareness. We don’t choose to have our heart focused on the man we love – it just is. We don’t choose to always be thinking of ways to connect with you – we just do. We don’t decide to put love first – it just is first.
THE LOVE PIE
Here’s an easy and visual way to understand the way women feel about love and relationships. I call it the “Love Pie.”
Visualize two circles, like pies, one representing a man’s consciousness and the other representing a woman’s consciousness. Now imagine a tiny slice cut out in each circle, like a piece of the pie, perhaps one-tenth of the whole. In the man’s circle, that small slice is the percentage of his awareness that he focuses on love and intimate relationships. Everything outside of that slice, the other nine-tenths of the circle, is his awareness focused on his work, his hobbies, his projects, and other activities.
In the woman’s circle, however, it is exactly the opposite: The tiny slice of the pie is the focus of her awareness on work, hobbies, projects, and all the rest of the pie is the focus of her awareness on love, family life, and relationships!
Okay, this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration, but you get my point. Whenever I draw the Love Pie for my seminar audiences, it evokes peals of laughter from both sexes. Why? Because instinctively, we all know it’s true, and as we’ll see, it explains so many of the issues that become problems between the men and women.
Here’s an important distinction to remember: The Love Pie doesn’t symbolize how we divide our time, or how many hours we spend on love versus other activities. It depicts where our awareness is focused on the inside, no matter what we are doing on the outside. For instance, a woman may