It's a Guy Thing (3 page)

When your man turns away or becomes involved in something else, you could say, “Did you notice that half an hour ago we were making love when the phone rang? Since you hung up you haven’t even looked at me.” He’ll look puzzled, and mumble “Yeah, okay.”

You could also say, “I felt a sudden shift in your attention. One moment we were passionate, the next moment nothing. Our hearts were connected, and now they are not.” It will seem bizarre to you that he doesn’t feel any of this, but he usually doesn’t.

When I lead men’s groups, we spend a lot of time talking about this. I try to convince the men that women do feel the shifts in a man’s attention. The men don’t believe it. They’ll say, “You’re kidding, right?” I’ll say, “I’m serious. If you’re with a woman and you suddenly turn away and begin to work, she feels it in her body. She feels your attention moving away from her. She feels hurt.” The men will usually respond, “How are you supposed to live with that?”

Men often have no idea they’ve hurt you. When you tell them, it helps if you understand their perspective. Talk to them as if they’ve fallen asleep and reawakened. So rather than criticize their actions, tell them how it makes you feel. Say, “When you picked up the phone I felt hurt,” rather than “Don’t pick up the phone when we are together.” You can tell them how it makes you feel. Then they can handle it.

But if you expect a man to know they’ve hurt you, they’ll say, “What hurt you?” They don’t sense the turning away is as hurtful as it is to you.

What Can I Do When He Seems So Burdened?

At their core, most men feel constrained by life. It is a struggle for men to simply enjoy life. Most everything feels like a constraint and an obligation to them. It sometimes feels this way to women also, but for most men it always feels this way.

Have you seen the bumper stickers that say, “Life sucks”? That’s the masculine motto. That’s why all men are driven either to escape or conquer life. They may do this by becoming absorbed in the newspaper, watching TV, making a lot of money, using drugs, or even by practicing meditations which promise to help them transcend daily life.

Daily life. Being in a body, having relationships, caring for children, needing to eat. Existence seems like a burden or a challenge to most men, something to work on or escape from, something to conquer.

Because a woman is so connected to life, it’s hard for her to understand the need to conquer or escape it. But for most men, even being in a body is a problem. If a man is the conqueror type, he will attempt to push his body and make it do what he wants, applying his energy to push toward victory in the affairs of life.

For a man life seems like a constraint, be it his body, his relationship or his work—until he learns to practice love. Just like Jesus on the cross, most men feel crucified by life. A spiritually mature man learns to love in the midst of this crucifixion. Even so, he may still feel like life is a sacrifice.

I’m overstating this to make a point, but men are always attempting to do something with life, because they are not at home in life. Rarely is a man capable of being love in the midst of life, submitting to the crucifixion, suffering life’s limitations, and yet bringing love into his relationships.

Some of your special gifts to your man as his chosen woman are energy and attraction. You attract him toward life by your radiance, and give him the energy to endure the crucifixions of life through the power of your love.

Your gifts of energy, of radiance, of attraction, may take the form of your genuine smile, the look of love in your eyes, your
touch that enlivens him, anything that fills his body, mind and emotions with energy, love and life. Then he feels you as his source of delight in an otherwise burdensome world.

Why Is He So Obsessed with Perfection?

Men, or anyone in their masculine energy, typically seek perfection. It could be the perfect wax job on the car, or the perfect wave to surf, or the perfect touchdown. Women, of course, also seek perfection at times. But the feminine priority, in man or woman, is usually the desire for love.

If you, as a woman, are suffering in a poor relationship, how much will you enjoy the “perfect” wax job on your car? Many men, however, become totally obsessed with things like that even in the midst of a painful relationship. In fact, they
particularly
become obsessed by things like that during painful times. It’s their little way of engaging in the perfection of unblemished consciousness, consciousness that is always perfect.

Our masculine and feminine ways are not only rooted in our biological roots, but also in our spiritual depths. As it has been said in many spiritual traditions, the first thing created was light. This light is the true source of our feminine energy, and the void in which it shines is the source of our masculine.

That’s why many women are concerned with their radiance. They identify themselves as sources of light or energy. They want shiny hair, glossy lips, blushed cheeks, glowing skin, radiant eyes. The feminine in each of us feels akin to life force itself.

The masculine in each of us feels more akin to the void in which the light shines. Most men would rather watch women dance than dance themselves. They want to witness feminine radiance. Thus, men identify more with the witness, with awareness, with consciousness itself.

This consciousness never moves, while the feminine energy always moves. This consciousness never changes, while the feminine energy always changes. Men who stand firm and trustable in their deep truth are more sexy to women. Women who move their bodies freely in radiant energy are more sexy to men.

Men seek perfection in the external world—in their philosophies, golf games and a centerfold’s body—because they intuit the perfection of deep and eternal consciousness. But they misplace this desire for perfection. Deep consciousness, or divine consciousness, may be perfect, changeless and unblemished, but life is not. Life is the play of energy. Life is feminine!

Anything that is alive is not perfect, though men try to make it so. They try to perfect their golf game. They fantasize over perfect women’s bodies. They try to understand the perfect philosophy. Men seek perfection because they intuit the nature of consciousness, which is unchanging.

Changeless perfection is irrelevant for the feminine. The feminine is interested in love and life, and life includes birth and death and change. Life is not unchanging and perfect all the time.

For consciousness purists, however, change is anathema. Men, especially when feeling threatened by the feminine, want to retreat from the changes of life into perfection, voidness, or unchanging abstraction.

They become immersed in a newspaper, or in TV, something that removes them from the problems of life. Or, they
become focused obsessively on perfection in some trivial form, because that’s the closest they can get to the perfection of unblemished consciousness. Men are most at home in projects, sports, philosophy and ideas outside of the daily ups and downs of life.

If a woman is obsessed with perfection, she has probably rejected her own feminine. For some reason, she has identified with her masculine energy. Just as men must learn to embrace life and love in order to become whole, perfectionist women must learn to embrace the feminine part of themselves and others. This begins with an embrace of the body itself: a sensuous appreciation for the body, for bodily pleasure, for the body’s wild energy, for the body’s beauty, for a full, sweet breath, and a soft, open heart. This embrace of the feminine is also the cure for a man’s obsessive perfectionism. If men don’t embrace the fullness of life, of feminine change, then they become one-sided. Men need to learn that if they want light, radiance and energy in their life then they need to embrace all the changes and so-called “blemishes,” too.

Why Do I Feel Him Rejecting Me So Often?

The primary masculine fear is the fear of failure in life. The primary feminine fear is the fear of rejection in a relationship, the fear of the loss of love. These fears motivate you and your man differently.

It’s a masculine obsession; men love to solve problems. If there is a problem, all your man’s energy will go into solving it. If you, as a woman, are also in your masculine energy, you
will be aligned to solving problems, too. But in your feminine energy, you’ll feel him turn his attention away from you toward the problem.

Imagine that your man gets a call from the bank telling him his account is overdrawn. For him, this becomes an immediate priority. His whole mind and body abruptly turn toward the problem and away from you. Even if you were making love the moment before he got the phone call, suddenly he has a problem that needs to be solved. You will feel his attention swiftly moving away from you. You may react by withdrawing from him, assuming that he is consciously turning away from you.

But these responses are simply the feminine and masculine energies at work. You are in your feminine and are sensitive to the relationship. You’re afraid of losing his love. He is sensitive to the problems that have to be solved in his life. He’s in his masculine mode of analysis and action. He’s afraid of failure.

He’s not acting the way he does to send you a message. He’s acting this way because it’s the way his masculine energy moves.

You’re not responding the way you are in order to hurt him. Yet the fact remains, you both feel hurt.

You may feel his attention to problem solving is a rejection of you, a betrayal of you. If this causes you to pull back from him, he will feel your withdrawal as rejection. He might think: “Here I am, taking care of my life, and she’s pulling away.” He doesn’t know you feel hurt and rejected. He’s unaware of your inner feelings. But he is aware of whether you are supporting him or withdrawing from him.

The masculine energy looks to the feminine energy for life-giving, radiance-giving, love-giving support. He needs
your support most when he gets into his world of problem solving. If you feel rejected and you close down or withdraw, he will feel your withdrawal of energy as a rejection of him, just like you felt his withdrawal of energy from you.

You are withholding because his attention went elsewhere. He may then withhold because he feels unsupported. Suddenly, you each feel the other withdrawing. Suddenly, there is a tension between you. You both feel unloved and unsupported.

When your man turns away from you to solve a problem, realize that is his need. It may even be his way of supporting you and serving you. Notice if you are responding to his absorption in problem solving by withdrawing yourself, feeling rejected or angry. All too often he is not consciously turning away from you at all; he may even feel that solving a problem is one of the ways he cares for you.

Your man should learn to communicate his needs to you in a loving way. He should learn to take your heart connection into account, so that his need to solve problems doesn’t violate your need for love. But in the meantime, understanding his fear of failure will help you deal with his abruptness.