Screwing Up Love

It’s funny in a tragic kind of way how two people in the early stages of romance can talk their heads off with each other and then, after making a commitment to each other like marriage, give up talking as if it were the plague.  One of the quickest ways to screw up love is to quit talking and listening to each other.  I want to emphasize the listening, because it’s what helps us to understand our mate’s feelings, needs, and desires for change.  Now, a couple can think they’re talking and listening to each other, when there’s not much of a connection.  It’s a little like static is passing between them.  They’re not really communicating at a deep enough level to solve problems and get the support they need from each other.

George and Brenda came to me for a coaching session because their relationship was going down the toilet.  Why?  They couldn’t communicate effectively.  I still remember the day when they got into a shouting match in my study.  Brenda was screaming about how George never shared his feelings. George responded with, “Are you nuts? I express my feelings all the time.  You just don’t hear them because you’re talking all the time.  You don’t listen!”

In general, there is a difference between men and women regarding communication.  Yes, there is.  Men have feelings, but unless they’re pissed off or defeated by some life event, their feelings are expressed in muted tones.  When they’re pissed off, the tones grow loud and aggressive.   There are definitely exceptions to this rule, because, remembering how we’re different human animals, some men are more like women in the feeling area—they actually express feelings openly.  But, overall, I’d say men don’t have the strong, gushy type feelings that women have.  Like, they don’t cry easily and don’t even feel love the way most women do.

You have to remember that men are apes, well we all are, aren’t we?  If you’ve seen Jane Goodall’s video of male chimps trashing a forest to display their strength and dominance, you’ll have a better sense about how men express themselves.  They’re always showing off, so they can attract as many females as possible and dominate those who have fallen under their spell.  So, men’s feelings are expressed to establish dominance, while women’s feelings are expressed to establish relationship. Now, that’s a broad generalization, but I’ll bet you agree there’s an element of truth in it.

Watching male and female chimps interact, we get a good sense for how men and women interact.  Actually, male chimps are probably more evolved than human males on the touchy-feelie side because they like to be groomed and to groom others.  It’s because they have fleas, whose teeming populations they have to control on a daily basis or life would get extremely miserable for them.  If humans had a colony of fleas living on their bodies, men might be social in the way woman are, at least for a time.  Sooner or later, they’ll begin trashing their surroundings so they look bigger than they feel on the inside.

So, here’s the deal.  The reason why it’s so easy to screw up love is that, if men had their way, they’d maintain their dominance and women would submit to their every desire, which will include sex four thousand times a week.  Men are more like male chimps than women are like female chimps.  Know why?  It’s because women have become more conscious and most of them are no longer willing to put up with men’s dominating tendencies.  One of the reasons that men resisted women’s liberation so strongly was their fear of losing dominance and learning that, on the whole, women might be smarter than they are.

Let’s get back to screwing up love.  Some men and women have evolved to the point where they can actually talk about their problems without breaking up the furniture.  They’re the lucky ones.  The others will fail to talk, talk too much, hardly listen, or never listen.  When partners get to this point, one of two things will happen.  They’ll split up or make each other miserable for the rest of their lives.

How do you communicate with your mate?  How does your mate communicate with you?  What do you do to screw up the communication?  How does that affect your ability to solve problems together when they arise?  What could you change to make it better?

Coaching Tips

■ Sit down with your mate and, together, write down all the things you do while communicating that work to help you solve problems and draw closer together. Then list what you do that causes breakdowns in communication so problems don’t get resolved and you kind of hate each other afterward.  Design a couple of changes in your ways of communicating to improve things.  Two changes will probably produce some pretty dramatic results.

■ When communicating with your mate make sure to cover the facts of the situation as you see them, your feelings, your needs, and how you’d like the situation to change.

■ When you’re listening to your mate, pay close attention to how he or she sees the facts, his or her feelings, needs, and what kinds of changes are desired.

■ When you have talked and listened at the deep level of the facts, feelings, needs, and desired changes, you will come to understand each other. That understanding will allow you to solve your problem is a more constructive, maybe even wiser, way.