It's a Guy Thing (17 page)

How Serious Are Men’s Sexual Fantasies About Their Female Co-Workers?

Most men are sexually attracted to many different women every day. If you ask them, “How many times a day are you sexually attracted to women?” they might honestly answer, “How many women do I see?” A good portion of their day involves being sexually attracted to women, although they don’t usually act on it.

When men see an attractive woman, they don’t necessarily feel an emotional desire for relationship. It’s more like the desire for an ice cream sundae, for a moment of delicious pleasure. It doesn’t necessarily have any emotional depth to it. They are not thinking about leaving their wives every time they see another woman. It’s a momentary biological desire.

So if you are an attractive woman in the workplace, the men are going to be sitting there fantasizing about sex with
you. You may wonder, “What the hell is going on here?” You are just trying to do your job.

But there is also another side to this play of attraction. If you are going to your workplace wearing makeup, dressing attractively, aware of your sexiness, then you are expecting to be seen as a woman. You are not shaving your head and going to work in a gray sack or something like a nun’s outfit. If you were, then you might be able to avoid this whole dynamic. Or maybe not—men at work might still be polarized to your sheer sexual energy, with no embellishment at all.

The way men experience your attractiveness is as sexual desire in their bodies. So they think you must feel the same sense of desire in your body, “She’s open to sex.” Of course, you may not be feeling this way at all. But that’s their natural bodily response to your natural feminine energy.

All of their lives, men learn how to cut off their sexual desire so they don’t get into trouble. When men get together, though, they can relax and let it out. They talk about the women they have seen and want. Men know how meaningless it is. They may say, “Did you see Betsy? I’d really like to have her!” They don’t think about the whole issue or feel the emotional depths of it. It’s more like, “I’d sure like some chocolate ice cream!” The other guy says, “I’d like some strawberry ice cream.” Then it’s back to work. There’s no depth to it at all.

Should I Support Myself Even If He Wants to Support Me?

For many men, meeting the challenge in the marketplace or elsewhere is itself rewarding. It might be the struggle of
surfing a wave, writing a novel, struggling with inner demons through meditation or with opponents through martial arts. But it is the struggle itself, the battle, that many men really enjoy.

Although women also enjoy money, success and becoming full in their art or profession, they don’t necessarily enjoy the sheer struggle of it: getting out there and competing with others, seeing who’s better, and making it happen against all odds. This competitive struggle isn’t as attractive for most women as it is for most men.

Men love battles, struggles and competition. If they aren’t living it in their lives they get it through football games on TV, combat movies, financial gambles, spiritual searches, arguing philosophy and politics or creating a war. But most women are not as interested in these things as men.

To honor each other’s uniqueness as woman and man we need to go through a period of learning that it’s not about who “should” do what. If I’m afraid of cockroaches, it’s not something that I should be embarrassed about. If my woman is heavily involved in playing high-stakes poker games, fine.

Your man may be moved to cherish you and protect you in a certain way, not because you are weak, but because you are radiant, precious and beautiful to him. He knows that when you have to go out and compete in the masculine-dominated business world, you will have to dampen your radiance and take up the sword, to some extent. He may want to relieve you of this obligation. On the other hand, you might really enjoy and excel at business. It’s an individual matter. You and your man will have to learn your unique ways of gifting each other.

You may be equally happy and able to take up the sword and compete in the world of hardball business as you are able to be fully relaxed, radiant and open in love and sensual ecstasy.

But the fact is, as a culture, we have denied the feminine, and many women live a life compromised by masculine economic pressures in a masculine business world. Taking on so much masculine energy stresses their body, breath and emotions. They experience a sense of emptiness and anxiety. Due to holding excess masculine energy in their bodies, and protecting or hiding their feminine energy by neuromuscularly “armoring” themselves, many women may eventually experience symptoms of physical disease, especially in the more feminine parts of their body.

We deny the feeling of sweet surrender. We suppress the ecstasy of the heart. For whatever reason, the momentum of the world has led to the masculine force being more accepted than the feminine. The masculine is considered productive and efficient, but it’s not necessarily the most fulfilling. We can make the happiest choice of both, the way of the sword and the way of the goddess, once we know the value of both and can experience both without stress. The warrior can gift the goddess, and the goddess can gift the warrior, whether we are talking about the warrior and the goddess inside each of us or the unique gifts shared between partners.

9
Why Talking Doesn’t Work

How Do I Create Intimacy?

You create intimacy moment by moment. You set the level of intimacy in a relationship by how much you reveal yourself. If you repress feelings when your man is talking, he will probably do the same.

You will either attract a man who is as equally open to intimacy as you are, or you will set up a resonance field which will induce your man to be as open as you. You can’t expect complete intimacy on his part if you’re hesitant to let him know what’s really going on inside of you.

Why Can’t We Communicate?

Many difficulties in relationships occur because people assume that men and women are pretty much the same. And they are similar from certain perspectives. Both men and women have two arms and two legs for instance. At the spiritual level men and women are also identical. That is, they are identical at the level of light, the level of unconditional love. But just about everything between the level of molecules and unconditional love is different between men and women.

One of the differences between men and women is in the way they talk.

We each have three “centers” of communication in our body. The doing or action center is located near the navel. The emotional or feeling center is located in the chest. The thinking center is located in the head.

Most men speak from either their navel, the doing center, or from their head, the thinking center. When a man is listening
to you, he hears whatever you say through these two centers. When you talk with a man and you say something like, “I don’t feel great today,” he will probably say something like, “What do you want to do?” He will try to solve the problem for you; tell him a feeling and he will respond with an action. Either that, or he’ll start analyzing you: “I think your feelings are due to your parents.” Or, “When does your period start?”

You might ask, “How are you feeling about Joe?” Your man might answer, “I want to kill the guy,” rather than saying, “I’m feeling angry.” He won’t describe his emotions. He will describe his desire for action.

Most women, by contrast, tend to speak and listen from their emotional center, from their chest area. For instance, when he asks what you want to
do
about something, you tend to describe your
feelings
. You say, “I’m losing my job.” He says, “What are you going to do?” And you answer, “I’m feeling scared.”

Between intimate partners, the conversation can also go something like this:

He: “Do you want to go to the Smiths tonight?”

She: “Well, last time I saw Judy Smith she made me feel really uncomfortable.”

He: “Okay, but do you want to go to see them tonight?”

She: “Well, what do
you
feel like doing?”

He: “I feel like I want to know what we’re going to do tonight.”

He gets frustrated because you don’t communicate in terms of action and analysis. You get frustrated and feel,
Where’s the connection between us?
By understanding these natural differences between men and women, we can avoid a lot of conflict.

You can actually practice speaking from any of the three
centers. You can learn to speak in
doing
words,
feeling
words or
thought
words. If you really want to resonate with your man, for instance, take a moment and translate your feelings into action sentences. Then he will get it right away.

This is a tiny difference that makes all the difference.

How Can I Talk So He Understands Me?

One method for full communication is to tell your partner what you
think, feel
and
want
to do. For instance, you could say, “When you tell me how to fix the toilet, I
think
you consider me stupid, I
feel
hurt and I
want
to hit you with this wrench.” You express all three: thoughts, feelings and desires.

You could use this form of communication when he isn’t making money. “When you sit in front of the TV instead of doing business, I think you’re irresponsible, I feel abandoned and I want to trust you.”

It’s always good to communicate to your partner how his actions affect you. By speaking in terms of thinking, feeling and wanting, he has a much better chance of connecting with you and understanding you.

Why Does He Think I’m Stupid?

Men are essentially problem solvers. They want a problem to solve. They see everything as a problem to solve, even your emotions. When you tell him how you feel, a man will immediately try to figure out ways to “solve” your feeling.
This is their masculine energy at work.

Telling somebody what to do, how to solve a problem, is an expression of masculine energy. When your man tells you what to do, for instance, it is not a judgment that you don’t know what to do. He would tell anyone what to do.