Will I Ever Find a Man Who Gives Me the Love That I Want
My bible this month is still David Deida’s book, “It’s a Guy Thing.” His in depth understanding of intimacy and the psychology of love is sooo good. Whenever I read his stuff every other coach seems so amature. I try to be very particular about what I post and when I read this page I knew I had to share it. As women how many times have we felt unloved by the man in our life? In some cases it is real, but in most cases it is not. Check out David’s perspective on feeling loved below. :)
Excerpt below from “It’s a Guy Thing” - pg 206.
One of our basic emotional assumptions in intimacy is the feeling. You don’t love me. All of us have a “button” that is occasionally pressed by our partner which makes us feel, That person doesn’t love me. The “I’m not being loved” button is one of the most destructive buttons in intimate relationships because it is frequently pressed completely by accident. Our feeling of not being loved has nothing to do with our partner. We are feeling our own closure to love.
The “I’m not being loved” button is one of the most destructive buttons in intimate relationships
For instance, many men can suddenly switch from an intimacy mode to some other mode. Your man is with you in intimacy one moment. Suddenly, the phone rings, a football game comes on TV, or a thought comes to him – and he’s gone.
You may feel hurt or rejected because he turned away and forgot you. Your expression of hurt may make him feel constrained, unable to do what he wants. He may even feel resentful and angry toward you….Men tend to feel constrained by life and especially by their woman.
As a woman, the root meter or radar in your heart is, “Am I being loved or am I not being loved?” As a woman, you are very sensitive to the shift from being loved to not being loved. You are very aware of when your man switches from one mode to another.
Men also have a meter, but it doesn’t work the same way. The meter in most men measures, “Am I free or am I constrained?” That’s why men get unbelievably angry at things that seem ridiculous to women. For instance, many men will go crazy when they are trying to fix something. If it doesn’t go perfectly well, they will start yelling and swearing. “Goddamnit!”….
When men and women are in an intimate relationship, there is a feedback cycle between their two “meters.” He begins to feel constrained by your emotional needs in the relationship, by your sensitivity to lovingness. And this sensitivity to lovingness is more and or jarred by his resentment and dissociation from you, his response to feeling constrained.
These buttons get pressed frequently in relationships. All he has to do is feel a little constrained and he will pull away. He pulls away, your meter goes off and you feel unloved. You pull away and he feels a “problem” that needs to be fixed, so he feels even more constrained. The cycle goes on and on.
A large transformation takes place in your intimacy when you realize that your partner has no control over his reactions. When you realize that both of you react automatically to emotional “buttons” that became part of you as children, then you are relieved of much guilt or blame…
It helps to look at your partner this way. You can see he is only being reactive. One of his buttons, one of his childhood wounds, has been pressed…
Suppose your man turns away from you to play with one of his “toys.” Instead of collapsing in your own feeling of, “You don’t love me, you could notice, There it is. He’s getting distanced into a mode again. You can relax in your heart and serve his growth rather than assume he doesn’t love you. Just because he kicks you in your emotional shin doesn’t mean you should kick him back or run away….
Just because he kicks you in your emotional shin doesn’t mean you should kick him back or run away
No man is capable of always giving you the love that you want. When your inner child doesn’t get its way it will want to run away, collapse or kick back. Intimacy, like parenthood, is a practice that requires giving love to your partner even while he is pushing your buttons or kicking your shins. Love begets love. Punishment and withdrawal without love do not provide the basis for trust and real growth in intimacy…
Love is not something you have or don’t have. Love is something you do. It is not something that comes to you. It is something you are giving or refusing to give, moment by moment.
Much Love,
Malena