How to Understand the Male Ego
- (Dear all, I found this article on the internet (wiki) and I would like to share this good readings with you. Happy reading!)
- Recognize that he's not from Mars. Men and women are much more alike than many people would like to admit. He's a human being just like you, with feelings and thoughts and personal beliefs. So don't get caught up in thinking that you two will never be able to understand each other, because sometimes you just have to open up and accept each other's views without wanting to change them. Men have just as wide a range of emotions as women. That being said, men's emotions often center around different things than women--sports teams, favorite childhood toys, even special TV shows. Make the effort to get to know a man's secret passions and you'll unlock his affections towards other things, like you!
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You're not his mother. You really aren't. Please, don't try to be. When articles talk about how men are looking for women who remind them of their mothers, you can be pretty sure the nagging, tyrannical harpy demanding we clean our rooms is not what we're after. Even if you're a man also, don't try to turn a sloppy guy into a neat guy, or make a straight laced guy into a booze hound. What we're really looking for is someone who makes us feel safe, protected, and for the love of Pete, accepted. Accept us as we are (and tell us that you do so!), and you'll have a loyal partner for as long as you can stand him.
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His barriers are generally of his own making. Men who are happy are confident, and therefore are more attractive. Men with less confidence generally become unhappy with their lot in life, and so start a vicious cycle where their bad moods make them less and less attractive. For all you men reading, find a way to break the cycle. Get a dog, quit your job, buy a guitar, anything. Nothing is less sexy than crushing self-pity. If you want to help a man who seems caught in one of these cycles, try to bring him back to a place of normalcy--a road trip with a good buddy, a weekend away from his distractions, or anything to remind him of who he really is. Warning: if his problem is you, this exercise will exacerbate your troubles; if you really love him, you really should let him go.
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Understand where he's coming from. Single men are at their most emotionally fragile times when encountering new relationships--social pressures to "be the man," emotional issues about present and past relationships, and sex confuse both parties' emotions by sometimes creating the illusion of an infatuation that isn't there. Communication, rather than sex, should be free-flowing early in the relationship. Both partners need to get their footing in relation to one another, so replacing intimacy with sex is unhelpful. Men will respond to sexual cues (who doesn't love pleasure?), but oftentimes will be fundamentally confused as to the nature of the relationship when based only on non-verbal communication.
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Don't rush him, even if he wants you to. This is most evident in flirting and courtship, where many men mistake infatuation and emotional rush for "true" emotions, often jumping headlong into emotionally risky situations like sex, weekend trips, meeting parents, etc. This rush is unavoidable, and any attempt to ameliorate it by either increasing or decreasing intimacy will not dissuade men from believing their feelings at the time to be their "true" feelings. Thus, it is advisable not to radically change your schedule for your partner immediately--incorporate boring getting-to-know-you dates early on to encourage a sense of reality in both partners. Plus, imagine the sexual tension you'll build up by making yourself seem like a challenge!
- That having been said, potential partners are still obliged to make their intentions clear. Players who are "just having fun" or "just playing the field" should know that they are doing so at the expense of their man's emotions. Stringing a guy along for free food or booze, attention (see Warning section on male validation, a.k.a. daddy issues!), or starting side projects while involved in relationships already, and you've got a perfect storm of emotion-crushing. Consider it relationship karma: if you don't want to be played, don't play.
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Get to know his feelings on intimacy prior to sex. Most everybody loves sex. Men will love sex whether it comes fast or slow in the relationship. Let sex be a natural outgrowth of intimacy; actively dissuade your partner from jumping straight to sex by encouraging public intimacy--hand-holding, walking arm-in-arm, and other family-friendly PDA. Pair-bonding is a fundamentally social experience, so if you're not comfortable kissing your man in public, you shouldn't be bedding him in private.
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Share private details from your pasts. Ask your man to reciprocate; you might be surprised, even mortified, by the honesty of your man. Many guys are desperately looking for someone to understand what they've gone through, so a great intimacy-builder is privacy-sharing. Notice that you don't want to go overboard with this...
- Be wary in privacy-sharing of "Mr Fix-It." There exists the desire in all of us (both men and women) to solve problems. Traditional male jobs often encourage problem-solving skills, so this might be very pronounced in an engineer or a managerial partner. However, most emotional problems require a listening ear, not a fixing tool; if you don't want him to fix your problems, but do want him to understand where you're coming from, tell him to deactivate that part of his brain for a minute. There's nothing wrong with simply saying "I need a minute to vent without judgment or opinion, okay?" Also, make sure you know the difference--wrapping a problem in the relationship in the guise of a story from your childhood is an example of an IED (improvised explosive discussion--see Warning section below).
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Realize that men want to be playful. This is not to say that you should encourage sloppy or lazy boyfriends, but keep in mind that you shouldn't try to clean up after him, change his habits, or any other mothering tactics. A better way to look at his slovenly nature is that men generally are chasing after one ideal throughout their lives: play. Reaching that blissful state of unworried play is often the entire goal of men's careers, whether it comes through monetary security, dangerous forms of employment and recreation, or even just through a gambling or drinking habit. While some men take it too far, most men are simply looking to have fun; his video games, golf clubs, or cigar collection may be his ticket to Nirvana!
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Learn what he wants from how he interacts with his friends. Men everywhere seek this unworried mind, this state of play, through games and hobbies and even relationships; most men, when asked, have remained long-term partners with their wives because they consider the wife a "best friend"--that is, someone who increases their possibility of playfulness. If you are of the drama-seeking bent (Twilighters!), you may disagree; but which is more important--long-term stability, or the temporary insanity of brief, charged, often highly sexual encounters that invariably end as quickly and emotionally as they started? The vast majority of single men, just like single women, are out there looking for a simpler, happier, less tragic kind of love.
- Statistically, men are more single-minded in their pursuits than women, preferring one activity at a time to multitasking. If you want your man to really pay attention, don't bother disrupting a gaming session or poker night. You're better off scheduling sit-down time with him when neither of you are distracted.
- If you want to talk about something serious but don't want Mr. Fix-It, connect your desire to share with his own . Example: "Hon, I need to share something important with you, like that one time you told me what happened to you in gym class." Note: avoid IEDs if you want to avoid a major fight--guys never forget their most shameful experiences, so don't cheapen them by trying to score points in the present argument.
- Everybody should know by now that guys aren't mind-readers, but they are also as stubborn as mules when it comes to their emotions. Gals--be aware that your guy friend might want more than friendship. If you don't feel the same way, make sure you let him know a.s.a.p. Many guys twist in the wind for months because they can't (or won't) interpret subtle brush-off signs, or figure that friendship will lead somewhere eventually. Surrounding yourself with doormat guys who will never act on their desire to have sex with you does not count as having friends; it's just attention-seeking behavior (see Warning section below).
- In this age of heightened awareness to rape, sexual assault, and harassment, women should get used to men abdicating making the first move. It is simply more pragmatic for women to make first moves in establishing relationships. With beautiful women the subject of affections from numerous men, it's simpler for the woman to choose the man she wants to be with, rather than have several men fight over her like she's a hockey trophy; this can also be attention-seeking behavior, if the woman in question purposefully plays several men against each other for her affections (Example: Bella in the Twilight series. Yes, I went there.)
- If you are a drama queen (or king), learn to recognize the difference between an actual issue or problem between you and your partner from an excuse to fight or bring up past grievances. Realize that the present argument may be just a cover for some other larger issue that has gone undisclosed and left to fester. The next time you feel yourself unable to stop yourself from arguing, ask yourself (or your partner) where this anger is really coming from. If your partner is unable to provide you with an answer, end the conversation until you both have a chance to calm down and identify the root problem. Otherwise, your tiny relationship cavity will become a huge seething relationship abscess!
- IED: Improvised Explosive Discussion, or anything that you know will be difficult to talk about, so you will wrap it in something innocuous to ease its passage into conversation. Wrapping questions of "where is this relationship going?" in discussions of what movie to see that night is an example. If you're worried, tell him you're worried. Nobody responds well to discussions that rapidly change course and importance.
- On sharing private details (discussed above): don't compete. If your man has a tragic experience, you can tell him your even-more-tragic experience, but maybe you will want to save that detail for the next conversation. Sharing is difficult enough for men in American society--don't make it seem like you're beating his worst with your worst.
- Attention-Seeking Behavior: Everybody wants attention, and that's fine. What's not fine is manipulating the feelings of others to get that attention. Examples include: starting fights with no grievance, or in a public place; setting ultimatums; depriving your partner of their own home or their own bed for your emotions; turning on the waterworks (enhanced crying and/or tantrum throwing for effect); getting violent because you know he can't or won't reciprocate. Even more dastardly behaviors include involving the kids in arguments (if you have them), blaming current strife on your partner's past, or (lowest of all blows) impugning your partner's masculinity. If your partner (male or female) persists in any of these behaviors, feel free to DTB (Dump That B****, or Bastard).
- Daddy Issues: Male validation is sorely lacking in today's culture--whether through the spike in fatherless households, the general disappearance of local business owners, or the outsourcing of tough labor to other countries, we're losing touch with our men. Some men try to capitalize on this dearth by attempting to fill this hole for a role model, father figure, or big sweaty man-hug; unfortunately, this is also manipulation, as nobody should ever be required to fulfill someone else's emotional circuit. Men who encourage this co-dependency should be avoided like the pedo-bears that they are, and women who seek this sort of validation should get their rocks off in an honest job as an exotic dancer or a sex worker. Above all else, don't join or start a cult, or some freaky pseudo-polyamory group that recruits and renames cadres of impressionable youths to be snacks for their depraved leaders. That way lies the dark side.
- Not all men either have or want emotions, just like women; however, you will most likely be able to tell the emotional men apart from emotion-less men because emotional men don't treat relationships like a game. Competition, bravado, machismo--these are emotionally stunting characteristics in human society, creating boundaries, teams, conflict, and ultimately hostility. Men that delight in emotional combat are not generally reliable long-term partners, as they tend to turn on their own partners just as readily as their fellow competitors.
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