Men And Women: How We Relate

It's incredibly important for people in relationship to be able to talk about their feelings. Major disruptions occur when one person wants to share feelings and the other wants to speak logically about the circumstances. Two different languages are being spoken and no communication is occurring.

Men are particularly skilled at diverting feelings with logic and for some men it becomes their default method of handling such discussions. Some men have an incredible ability to take any situation that their partner is attempting to share on an emotional level and turn it into an intellectual dialogue. Men attempt to problem solve when women merely want an emotional connection.

Men and women seem to speak two different languages: a male language and a female language. We refer to these differences in communication styles as speaking man-ese and woman-ese. n n Men and women not only tend to have two different languages and styles, they have two different ways of experiencing the world. Men generally experience the world in logical sequence. They tend to function by using primarily the left side of the brain.

Women, on the other hand, usually are more global, seeing things holistically and feeling things intuitively. The right side of the female brain tends to be dominate. While men are the doers, women are the receivers. This is not the case one hundred percent of the time, but in general form follows function. Men are the outies, women are the innies.

Women are raised to have their feelings. It's been okay over the years for the female of the species to feel, even though she may have learned to be careful about openly expressing those feelings. On the contrary men are seldom allowed the full range of their feelings because of the cultural definition of masculinity.

When you take inborn, natural characteristcs and add cultural conditioning to them, our distinctive styles become even more firmly entrenched. Furthermore, those differences become more pronounced and more challenging in the context of a relationship.

As a Marriage and Family Therapist, Denny's job is to sit with couples and help them understand, respect and appreciate their different styles. She helps men see that there's something deeper going on when they're stuck in their left brain intellectual perspective by directing them to a deeper part of the Self.

When women come for therapy, totally immersed in their feelings with no way of talking about it, they need to be directed to their intellect so they can express in words what they're feeling and needing. In a good relationship, you don't have to fight over who's way is the right way. You can simply accept the fact that these are two different ways of looking at the world. Two different styles, two different ways of being.

No one has to give up his or her way. If the man can learn to appreciate the woman's style and the woman can allow for the man's way of being, you can have communication. Each can learn to understand the other, recognizing the differences.

There are no hard and fast rules. Nothing is one hundred percent certain. Not all men are "thinkers" and not all women are "feelers." Our descriptions are generalizations. We've know relationships where the woman was the "thinker" and the man was the "feeling" one. Same sex relationships can have interesting combinations of "thinkers" and "feelers" or "thinkers" and "thinkers" or "feelers" and "feelers." What exists in one circumstance may not exist in the next. That's why it's necessary to be sensitive to the flow of relationship.

Relationships are not static, they are constantly changing and evolving. That's what makes relating an art form. We stay in relationship flow when we act from our inner sense of well-being.nn(From the book "Art of Relationship: The New Perspective." Other books by Ron and Denny Reynolds, published by Trafford Publishing include "The New Perspective: Ten Tools for Self-Transformmation," and "We Are Here: The Voice of The New Perspective." Visit their web site www.thenewperspective.com)n nnnnnnnnn