Welcome back to Shalom Bayit (peace in the home). B'ezrat Hashem (with Hashem's help).
Last week, we were working on the different natures of men and women, with the intention of understanding those natures and learning what works best for both of us. We really want to be happy. Our goal is to be happy. We want our husbands to be happy, and we want to have a happy and successful marriage.
But if we know what it means to make us happy, sometimes a person never really gets in touch with what would make them happy. They really want to be happy. They think they're striving their whole life to be happy, but they're doing it the wrong way, and it doesn't achieve the result they're trying to achieve. We do that with our husbands as well. We do it with ourselves. I want to be happy, but the things I'm doing are counterproductive to my happiness. My nagging and complaining don't make me happy. I'm not taking the positive steps in my life that would make me happy, so I'm not really understanding what makes me happy or what steps I should be taking. Therefore, I'm getting nowhere.
I want my husband to be happy, but I'm putting him down, showing him all of his faults, and criticizing him because I want him to be happy. Obviously, that's not making him happy, and it's not working.
In understanding my own nature through psychology and the spiritual realm, I want to know what really makes me happy. What direction should I go in for my own happiness? And I want to know my husband's nature: what will make him happy, and what will bring about the results I'm really trying to achieve? Most of the time, if we're going about it the wrong way, the result doesn't happen. We see that. We can be married for many years, trying for so many years, and nothing is happening because we're trying in the wrong way. We're working in the wrong way.
A mashal (parable) I could give you is this: You're trying to open a door. You have a key and a lock, right? You have the wrong key, but you're so stubborn and persistent that you're going to shove that wrong key in if it kills you. You're going to keep pushing it and turning it—and a little harder, a little more, a little louder. But it's the same key and the same lock, and it's not going to work. You're chipping the door, chipping the paint, and ruining the lock, but the key isn't going in because it's the wrong key.
All right, we want to understand our husband's nature. We want to understand his psychology. We want to understand what makes him tick, so that we use the right key. When we throw away the key that doesn't work and get the one that fits, maybe it's going to go in and the lock will turn, and we'll actually get the result we're looking for.
When I'm telling you about the nature of men that we discussed last week, and how it's very hard for them to say they're sorry because of their need for status, right? We talked about how a man's ego is the most important thing in his life. He has to feel strong, important, and respected. If he doesn't feel that, he can't flourish and grow. He cannot be happy without that.
Although this is our Shalom Bayit class, the truth is that even in parenting, we're told to educate the child according to his nature. You're not supposed to go against somebody's nature; you're supposed to go with it.
In parenting, if you have a very stubborn child and go head-on against him, if the child is very strong-willed and stubborn, going head-on against him is going to make him more stubborn and more difficult to deal with. Even though you're trying to get him to break down and listen to you, the more strongly you come at him, the stronger he gets, because you're not working with the child's nature. You're trying to break it.
When you want to go with his nature, you put him in charge of helping you get everything done. A child who's very strong-willed and wants to be in control is more likely to give in to that because he likes that position of control.
That's true in parenting, but it's true in marriage too. If I understand that my husband's essence comes from his need to feel respected and important, and that his self-esteem needs to be built up, then I can accomplish what I want by going with that and not against it. When I criticize him and put him down, I'm going against the nature that's at work, and I'm actually going to get nowhere. I'm going to crush him more, make him more resistant to what I'm saying, and it's going to work against me. It's not going to work for me.
If I get to the point where I understand my husband's thinking and his needs—his most important need to feel important and respected—then I can say everything I want to say in a way that fits that need. All right?
Recently, I was asked, “How many years does this take?” A lot. That's a good point. The truth is, the comment was said in a light way, but it's a very important comment because that's our main problem. We think, “I'm going to tell you now that there's a way to say something that's going to be much more effective.” You go home and try it, and he's still the same guy he was the day before. You say, “I tried it; it didn't work,” and that's it, you give up. But the truth is, it takes a long time, and we have to be very, very patient.
That comment was important because you have to know that, Baruch Hashem (thank God), this is a lifetime commitment, and please Hashem, we should have 120 healthy, happy years. We should have many years together to work on it. It's going to take all of them. The reason I say it's going to take all of them is that there's always more improvement to make. There's always another level higher that we can reach. You never finish. It's never over. It's something that grows and grows.
I felt the need to give you this little introduction before we get started because last week I felt maybe somebody was thinking it was too much psychology and not enough, “What am I going to do about it?” We have to be patient with that too, because we have to understand where our husbands' heads are. Then we're going to learn what to do with it and how to go with it. So we have to be a little patient.
All right, part of understanding how to deal with our husbands in the right way is first to understand them, to know what makes them happy and what makes them tick. The main thing we're going to keep in mind is their respect and their feelings of importance. We're going to go with that. We're going to constantly phrase everything we want to tell them in a way that makes them feel good about themselves instead of feeling low.
I'll give you an example of saying something in a way that works with his nature instead of against it. You want to tell your husband that he's really lazy, not trying hard enough, and could do more and do better. Obviously, that's not a way to make him feel good about himself. It's not going to work with his ego or his need for respect. Instead, you're going to tell him, “Honey, I really respect you, and I really think that you have a lot of capability. I really feel like things are going to happen. I just know that you're going to be able to put things together. You're really going to be able to...” It's the way we would talk to a child: “I know you could do it. I have faith in you that you can do it. I'm looking forward to a great year.”
I remember one rabbi—I don't remember which one now; it might have been Rabbi Horowitz—who heard about a principal who took a child who had been a problem at school year after year. The principal told him to come into his office, and the child sat down. While the child was sitting there, the principal called the child's parents. The child was shaking. The principal told the parents, while the child was listening, “I have your son David here in the office with me, and I just wanted you both to hear it at the same time: I know that this year is going to be the best year he ever had. I know that this year he's going to really produce and work well, and we'll work well together, and we'll see the great results I'm expecting from him this year.”
Basically, that's going to motivate the child to do well. With a husband, it's going to work that way too. Anything negative we want to say, we have to do our homework first and think: How can I put this in a way that will make him feel positive about himself instead of negative? I can tell my husband, “I have faith in you. I believe in you. I know you can do it. With a little change here or there, things are going to be better, and I know that you can take care of it. I know you can do it.” That's going to make the man feel good about himself. It's going to make him feel responsible, and he's going to think, “Gee, what can I do?” He'll think, “She knows I'm going to do something. What was I going to do?” He had no idea he had any plans to do anything differently, but you just told him. You know he's thinking of plans. You know he has big plans in his mind. You're so proud of the big plans he has for the future. He's going to go home and think, “Well, gee, what are my plans for the future?” because you have those expectations.
We're going to learn to rephrase everything we want to say in a way that will bring them up. It has to come off as real. The other way to do it is to put him down. You may decide to say nothing, but if you're going to say something, it has to be positive. If you're going to berate him, it's not going to achieve the goal. What is your goal? Your goal is twofold. My goal—I'm not going to say your goal—my goal in that type of situation is twofold: I want my husband to be the best that he could be, and I want to have the best Shalom Bayit that I could have. I don't think I'm going to achieve either of those goals if I take a negative approach. If I say, “You're so lazy, you don't do anything, you're not trying hard enough, I don't see any progress here. I don't understand what you're thinking,” I don't think that's going to motivate him to do more, and I know it's going to hurt my Shalom Bayit.
You have to know your husband, which is really an important point. You also have to learn to monitor the response you get. You have to listen to your husband. Try it once in a very real, sincere way. You can't make it sound like that. With our husbands, it has to be real; it has to sound and feel real. And it only sounds real if we make it real in our hearts. It has to start with sincerity. That means if I'm thinking my husband is a no-good-for-nothing and all he wants to do is laze around, it's going to come out phony because I'm being phony. The first step is to say, “You know, he's a good guy. He really is capable. If he just gets himself together, he could do this.” If I do that first and then give him that comment, it's going to come out more naturally and sincerely, and he'll take it better.
That's important, but I have to try it and monitor the response. You have to be able to see: How does my husband react to this? Is he rolling his eyes? Is he saying, “I know what you're up to”? Did he say, “So how much did it cost, or did you dent the cost?” If he doesn't trust you, I would take that to mean I haven't been doing this enough for my husband to think that I really believe in him. If you start something brand new after telling him he's a no-good-for-nothing for 20 years, and all of a sudden you come home from class and say, “You could do it, honey. I know you could do it,” he's going to say, “What happened?” He's going to say, “Where's the ticket? Show it to me.”
But it's something you want to build up. You want to tell him, “No, you know, something—I was wrong. I've been unfair. I've not been giving you enough credit. You do try, and you do work hard. I do believe in you. Look, I'm going to classes. I'm trying to think differently, and I really think that I'm not being fair to you. I was not being as fair to you as I should be.”
If you wait for a real opportunity to engage, or for something very minute, and you make it something big and really encourage him—you found a true moment to compliment him—he can't throw it away. Right, if it's something real. If it's something real. And you have to believe in your husband. You have to work on your own real, true belief in your husband. That means you can't be so negative in your own mind. We have a tendency to be negative. We do.
I think we have a tendency to be negative even if we work it out and don't act upon it or say anything. Thank God, I try very hard not to be a negative person in what I say and the way I act. But I'm at the stage where I also don't want to be a negative person in my own thoughts, where nobody's there and nobody hears. I want to go to the root of it in my own brain and say, “That's not fair. He is trying. He's working hard. He's doing what he's supposed to do. You wouldn't be able to get up at the time he gets up, Linda. You wouldn't be able to do the things he does. You wouldn't be able to work the number of hours he does.” I have to work on myself to feel positive. When I feel positive, it's going to come out more positively.
That doesn't mean I'm giving in to the status quo. I want him to do better. I want him to improve. But it's going to come from a positive outlook and not a negative one. I have to start by feeling sincere about it. My husband may not be used to it if that wasn't my technique until now. If I've been thinking about him and looking at him in a very negative way, he's going to notice something is different. You can tell him, “You're right. This is different. I want to be a more positive person. I want to be more fair. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. I changed my attitude.” You're allowed to. You're allowed to. That's what growth is about. That's what we're going to do. But we monitor the response and see what works.
The thing is, we've been doing the same negative things that haven't been working, and we don't monitor the response. We don't change our tactics. Now we're trying to change our tactics. We're going to be positive, think positive, and go in a way that works with his need to feel respected, strong, and important. We're going to build up our husbands because that's our most important role as a wife. The most important role as a wife is to build our husbands' self-esteem. It's our most important role as mothers as well, to give our children confidence, a feeling of security, and the feeling that somebody is behind them and cares about them.
There are some things we want to bring up with our husbands that are very sensitive. If we've been monitoring their reactions, we know that whenever we bring up a particular issue, it's hard to bring up. If I know that whenever I bring up his parents it ends up in a fight, or whenever I bring up where we're going to spend the holidays it ends up in a fight, or whenever I bring up money it's going to end up in a fight, then I know there are certain sensitive issues in our family.
When we approach those issues, we have to do it carefully. We have to think first. We have to know that this is a sensitive issue and I have to be very, very careful. If I ask him what he wants for dinner, that's not a sensitive issue. I can ask him, “What do you want for dinner?” It's not something I have to think about and word properly. But if I'm going to ask him, “Do you think we could spend more on such-and-such a thing?” that's his issue. I have to think about it and make it part of his psychology so that I can get him to trust me and feel comfortable. It takes a lot of doing, but it's important if we want a happy relationship. It takes a lot of work.
Conversations with men and women are very, very different. We're very different in our conversational style and in what we do and why we converse. They say that very often you'll find that men talk more in public than they do in private. You'll go out and be in a situation with friends, and your husband could dominate the whole conversation. He could go on and on, with all these interesting things to say. Everybody's thinking, “Wow, such an interesting person. He's so much fun to live with. You probably have these interesting conversations all the time.” They don't want to talk; they're just—okay. One thing is, you think you're a receptive audience. So the point is, if the audience is receptive, and you think you are a receptive audience, you do want to have a conversation with your husband, but he comes home and doesn't want to talk.
Why? Psychologists say that men talk in public for the purpose of raising their status. They want to prove to the crowd that they know things, that they're important, that they have something to tell. It's their nature to need respect and status and position, their fight for position in the crowd. The more they know, the higher up the ladder they get. If they're the ones sitting behind saying nothing, then they don't know. But if they have all the input, know the statistics, the stock reports, the real estate stuff, and all this interesting stuff, then they're the big shot.
Men are in a situation in public life where they have to build their status among the people they're with. So he's going to talk when he's in public. You think he's doing it just as entertainment. No, it's not entertainment. He's talking in the crowd because he desperately needs to feel important and feel that he has something to give over. He has to have power. He has to have status.
They say, interestingly, that although women are said to talk a lot in public, in a mixed crowd of men and women the women are usually quiet, and the men are the ones who are talking. We talk more when we're together with women, but if men and women are together, the men are the ones who speak up more. That's because a woman in public is more interested in keeping her emotional ties with the people around her. If she says too much, she may isolate or alienate herself. I told you before, if we're in a crowd and start making ourselves into the know-it-all, people pull away.
I shouldn't say this, and I always say things I shouldn't say, but that's the way I am. Sometimes I feel bad when I'm in a social situation and notice people looking at me like, “Oh, she teaches parenting class.” They're afraid to say anything to me, or they think, “Oh, she's going to see my kids are fighting. She's going to think I'm not a good parent.” It sort of pulls me away. People I'm close to—even mothers—can be uncomfortable sometimes, like, “Oh, but Mommy's the parenting teacher.” Then when they need me, they call me for advice. But there's a little awkwardness there because, “Oh, so she teaches parenting. So big deal.” I call my daughters and ask them for their opinions on this, you know.
What I'm saying is that a woman feels that if she gives over too much information or puts herself in a position of being on top, it's going to separate her from the people she loves. She doesn't want to do that. So in a crowd, she's going to hold back. She's not even going to want to say so much. We're coming from two different angles. The man in the crowd needs that power. He needs that status. He's going to use speaking to get status. A woman is going to keep quiet because she's afraid of separating herself from the other people. Okay?
Now, what happens when we go home? What's the mentality when we go home? He's relaxed. He doesn't have to prove anything to anybody anymore. He's off. He's off because he proved himself to his wife. He married her. He loves her. He's sharing his life with her. He's tired of proving himself all day. He was proving himself all day with words. He doesn't have to do that anymore. The biggest station he has is not to talk and to be able to relax, maybe read a book or be quiet, and not have to do what he's been doing under pressure the whole day.
Now, a woman had a lot of interesting things she wanted to say all day, but she was afraid to say them because people might not like what she had to say and she might become alienated from the people she cares about. So she's home with her husband finally. It's a safe place. She could say everything she wants to say, and he doesn't want to hear it. They're so opposite. We did what we had to do all day. Now we're finished, and we're thinking, “Finally, my husband came home. I have somebody to share my thoughts and feelings with.” And he doesn't want to hear. There's a clash of interests. It's not happening.
Understanding that makes us calmer about the dynamics taking place in most people's homes. The fact that he wants to sit, maybe just in the same room without speaking, and finds comfort in my just being there—that's all—talking's gonna ruin it. Talking's gonna break it.
Now, obviously, we need a middle. We need a balance. He has to understand where I'm coming from, and I have to understand where he's coming from. But I don't take it personally. I don't take it personally. I understand that there are differences in what we need psychologically and in how we communicate.
When you ask a woman, “Who's your best friend?” I hope it's your husband. But even among women, if I'm going to ask you, “Who is your best friend?” Don't say it out loud, because the other girls who think you're their best friend may get insulted. Think of someone you can talk to heart to heart on a regular basis.
If you stop and think about it, there were friends in my life where circumstances changed, and we stopped talking all the time because I was busy, she was busy, and we went in different circles. You're not best friends anymore. I remember at one point going in separate directions with someone, and she told me, “But we'll still be.” I said, “It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. If we're not going to be together, we're not best friends.” I have nothing against her. I love her. I still love her. But a woman needs a connection to be called someone's best friend. Who does a man say is his best friend among the men? Who's his best friend?
We're going to ask a man among the boys—not your wife—“Who's your best friend?” He's going to tell you, “The one I play tennis with, you know, or play basketball with my learning partner.” He has someone who's his best friend. He hasn't seen him in a year. He hasn't talked to him in a year, and he's still his best friend. They don't interact like that. They're best friends, but it's usually someone he does an activity with, someone he has some kind of activity with. That's his best friend. They don't have to talk.
So when we're defining best friends between husband and wife, we want someone we can talk to. They want someone they do things with.
Now I'm going to say something here. If we could have the children quiet, because I'm going to say something controversial, something a little risky. When it comes to intimacy, I find there's also a very big problem. A man sees intimacy as a way of achieving closeness. He sees it as—well, I'm not going to call it an activity, but he sees it as—and a woman doesn't like that at all. She actually gets very upset with that because she wants intimacy to be a reward for the closeness they've achieved in their life. She doesn't want it to be the means of achieving closeness. I could be wrong, and I've never said this before. A man takes it as a means of achieving closeness. That's a very big discrepancy in how we see our relationship.
A man wants what? Together. Together as a couple. Meaning that when the relationship is right, when there's the right atmosphere, the right give and take, and the right emotions between them, then that should be the icing on the cake, but it's not the cake. All right? The man feels that this is our way to become close. So if we're not close, let's get close. That's different. It's a problem to understand that and use that.
I want my husband to understand how I feel, and I might express my need for closeness in other ways. When my husband, let's say, makes an advance when I think we're not at the closest of times, it's not insensitive on his part. It's not like, “What are you thinking? You think that you can have this when we're not close? You want to be close, get close.” From a man's point of view, it's going to make him close: he's reaching out to be close to me, not taking advantage or failing to understand emotions. He's reaching out to be close to me. Although we may not have been as close as I wanted over the past couple of days, this is his reaching out to really be closer to me, and I shouldn't take it as a negative. I should take it as a positive. It means he really wants that closeness, and that's the way he knows how to go about it. He doesn't really know how to get the closeness otherwise.
Now, yes, we want our relationship to grow and to have other ways of being close. I think that working with the man's nature means that if I want to get closer to my husband, it's not going to come from long heart-to-heart talks. That's woman-to-woman. Woman-to-woman, we're going to get closer through long heart-to-heart talks, staying up all night talking. My husband's snoring while I'm talking three minutes later, and it's like it didn't happen. It's like, “Is it over yet? I can't hear. I can't hear myself. I need it a little quieter.”
I have to deal with my husband from a man's point of view. If I want to be closer to him, we can do activities together, because that's how he defines best friend. That's how he defines closeness. He defines it by activities we do together. So I have to think of activities we can do together. Maybe it's learning or teaching together. Baruch Hashem, teaching together has brought a lot to my husband and me as a couple. We teach Taharat Hamishpacha (family purity) together. We teach Shalom Bayit together. We're a team.
It might be chesed (kindness) projects that you could do together as a team. You know, doing Bikur Cholim (visiting the sick) as a team, as a couple, is a beautiful thing. The women do it by themselves in the daytime, but you could take your husband once a week and decide that this is something you're going to do together as a team. You visit elderly, homebound people, even people you know, even people in your own family. We tend to do it with people we don't know. We call up Bikur Cholim and ask for the numbers of people we don't know, and then we have relatives who are stuck at home and can't get out, and they're not on our list. Somehow, it's not—if you make it something you do together once a week, going to visit together, it doesn't have to take a long time. It could be one hour. It could be that you want to go bowling together. It doesn't have to be on a religious level. It could be that you like to exercise together. You want to go jogging together. I don't know. It could be whatever exercise you like, or walking together on Ocean Parkway. Make it an activity that you do together.
An idea for everything you really don't, but you try to play along with that. Doing an activity together for the purpose of becoming closer is going to depend on who wants the closeness, who wants to achieve it more. If the husband is reaching out to achieve closeness with his wife, he has to look for an activity she's going to enjoy, and he has to sort of make believe he enjoys that activity. But if he's not the one—and he probably will not be the one looking for more closeness, because the truth is he's very happy. He thinks there is closeness. He doesn't understand why you even need more closeness. “We live in the same house. We raise the same children. We're sitting at the same table. What do you mean, close? What's your problem?”
So if we're the ones looking for more closeness, then I think we have to do something they would enjoy; otherwise, we're not going to get their cooperation. Maybe we're going to have to learn to like it too. Like, they don't want to talk sometimes; they're into that. So I feel like I make believe I like it. I even have my own ideas, and then he's like, “That's a crazy idea.” But I said, “No, let's make a pirate island,” and I don't know what, and you'll charge a lot of money and you'll get a boat. Then he really looks into it, and it just looked like I cared and I really didn't. But I got a little creative, I got to talk to him, and I said, “Okay, it was fun.”
Men connect friendship with activity. Women connect friendship with conversation. If we want to be closer to our husbands, we need to try to—but we can't overwhelm them with an activity every night like it's a day camp. We can't do that. They're going to be totally stressed out. We have to back off. But if we could connect in some way in some area of their life, we'll feel a little more attached to them. It'll give us more connection.
I remember liking a boy when I was single, before the Shidduch (matchmaking) days, before all of that stuff. He was very into basketball. If you think I didn't know every basketball player's name and statistics, and whether he played well that night or not, you would be wrong. That was my way of trying to get close. Close was going to be in an area he liked, and I liked it because I wanted him to like me.
So if I want that for my husband, am I making believe I like it, or am I liking it because I want him to like me? It's the total opposite of what I would like. Everything I like is the opposite too. Right? So if I make myself like it a little, it helps. But if you could find something you could like, it's better. Because if we could find something—if it's exercise you could connect with, because sometimes exercise is something everybody needs, and it's healthy and important—then we can do something we can both get into. It could be learning that we can get excited about, a class we could go to together, or him teaching you a sefer or something else, and you put together a little time to do that together, or find something you could also like. If you really do like it, even if that wasn't your original intention or the...
You know, if my husband wanted to go bowling once a week, I would do it. I've gone bowling without him, so I would like it. I would enjoy it. It wouldn't be something I really don't want to do at all. If I could like it, it's better. But just understand that closeness can come from an activity he likes, because we're the ones who want the closeness. Even if you don't really like the activity that much, hopefully you'll have the time to see his presence. Right. That's right.
About something like going fishing—I don't know what you're talking about. But you know what? Now we have a family. So when we go fishing, we have a family. How does this happen? We go fishing. We look alike. Right? We look alike. Right?
My problem is still trying to like Home Depot. I'm having a very hard time with that. I'm really having a hard time trying to like Home Depot. I try and I say my first, and I say I'm going to be good with it. I'm going to enjoy it, and then 20 minutes at screws. 20 minutes. I don't know; it's for myself. So that's not my thing. It's nice, as long as you don't put me in the water. If you leave me on the—I'll deal with the smell.
So yes, there are things that are really hard to deal with, and that's not my thing. I'm not going to say, “Yeah, oh, honey, let's go to Home Depot once a week together. That'll be our thing.” I can't handle it. I can't handle it. It just drives me crazy. I'm a one, two, three, got what I need, at the door, finished type of shopper. I'm not a shopper. Even if you take me to the most beautiful clothing store, I'm still going to scan it and say, “Nope, nothing here, goodbye,” and walk out because I don't have patience for that. So how much more so with your car, the home, and Home Depot? When you want to screw, you want to screw, hedge it, put it in and finish, go. What are you going to do?
But if we can connect in some activity in our life that we can connect with and that will help bring closeness, what we do is different at different times. Let's say at the beginning of the marriage, we walk together. “Not once. It's not—no, it's not for me. Go find yourself a friend and go.” “Okay, okay, we start with bowling. It's not every day, once a week, once or twice in two weeks.” “Okay, it's gone after a long season. Let's go shopping.” “No, let's go do something.” “No, when he comes home, he wants to be home and do nothing, not an activity outside.” You have to learn what your husband would be interested in, and at different times in our life it will change as we grow. Your husband may click into a chesed or a mitzvah (commandment), or learning or teaching, more than he'll click into the walk or the bowling at this stage in his life. Try to find something he would want to do, and then do something with him—not so much something I want to do, but more something he wants to do.
I also want to go into another area: what happens when we have a problem. When we talk about our problems, women and men have very, very different ways of doing it. Women and men have different reactions to talking about problems, and this also causes trouble in a marriage if we don't understand where we're coming from.
When I tell my husband a problem, what does a woman want? What's the response we want when something's bothering us, when we had a hard day, when we have a problem and tell our husband? What's the response we're looking for? We want sympathy and validation. We want a pat on the back. That's what we want. What do our husbands give us? The solution. Either they give us a solution, or they might just change the subject without even making a comment. Did you ever get that reaction? You could say to your husband, “You know, I have to give this class, and I really don't feel good. I don't know if I'm going to—I don't even know if I'm going to be able to do it.” You're expecting a response, but it doesn't come. You feel very dissatisfied, very dissatisfied.
Okay, what happens here? We know as women what we want. We want sympathy and validation. We want them to ask questions about it and talk about it a little. If I bring it up a little, give me credit for it. We don't want a solution, advice, or to be told what we did wrong. And not just, “Why does it have to be like that?”
Now we have to remember: Why does a woman tell him? Because she thinks she's creating closeness. She thinks, “I'm telling him this. I don't have to tell him this. I'm going to my class. I'm teaching my class with my headache or without my headache. I'm teaching it. I figure I might as well share everything with him. That makes us closer.” He totally thinks no response is necessary. He just says whatever he has to say, and that's it. What is he thinking about closeness? A man, when he says, “I have to do my class, and I don't feel good,” doesn't want to feel low or inadequate or put down. So either he's going to give a quick solution, or he'd rather not talk about it at all.
He puts his own understanding into your comment and says, “We better just leave this topic altogether.” He thinks, “It's going to make her feel inferior. It's going to make us feel down. Let's just drop it. How do I have to go to the bank?” He doesn't want to talk. He doesn't understand, and he doesn't connect the way a woman connects.
So when my husband does that, he's not uncaring or insensitive. He's thinking from a man's mind, and I'm wanting a woman's reaction. If you want a woman's reaction, you have to tell another woman. When you tell another woman, you'll get a woman's reaction. It's not better; it's not that you don't have to tell him anything. I can smile when he goes over my head with it instead of being upset, instead of being, you know, men go and it didn't go, thinking, “Gee, honey, I was hoping maybe you would say...”
Sometimes they surprise you. I just read in a psychology book recently that, over time, men become more like women and women become more like men. Somehow, in the older stages of our life, we meet in the middle. There's a blending there. We start out more different, and we each mellow toward the middle. That's really what we're hoping to achieve.
They do surprise us sometimes. But it doesn't even matter what you want him to say. Some men—and I would think even most men—when I say, “I don't know how to handle this. I have to go to my class. I don't feel good at all, and I hope I can end up doing it. I don't know how I'm going to do it,” he might be thinking, “I don't know the right answer. I don't know what's going to make her feel good. I don't know if she wants me to say, ‘So get a substitute and stay home,’ or, ‘Just take aspirin and you'll be fine,’ or, ‘I feel so bad,’” which was probably what I wanted him to say. But he feels afraid to try because he's going to say the wrong thing, and that makes you feel horrible.
Right. Just relax. He doesn't know how to do it. He doesn't know what to say. When I'm managing, for example, advice, he'll be like, “Do you want to hear what I say or do you want to hear?” Right. We're both like that, by the way. It's not just him; it's men and women. We're both like that. But that's smart. That's smart, right? We're all logical. We just want the emotion as well. We know how to be logical too. When we want logic, we're logical. But we also have another aspect to it.
I think our reactions to our husbands' comments often program them to be afraid to say something. I think that very often we are negative with our husbands. I can't tell you what you're doing because I don't know what you say to your husband or do with him. But because we're programmed so differently in our minds, very often we're not going to get the response from our husband that we want. Then they're going to see that what they say and what they don't say tells you, “Relax,” and you're going to hit him. Because you look at it and think it's wrong, they can feel safer not answering than answering. He wants to solve it. He wants to, but he doesn't really know exactly what...
When I tell my husband that I don't feel good and I have to do this class and don't know how I'm going to handle it, he also thinks I'm complaining. He thinks I'm complaining that I'm working and it's hard for me, and I don't have the luxury of just staying in bed if I want to because I don't feel good. He's feeling a little guilty, and it's uncomfortable for him that I have a problem. I'm not thinking that way. I love what I'm doing, but he's reacting that way. He's going to avoid the situation and the comment, and go to the next thought in order to get away from an uncomfortable situation. Either he doesn't know how to respond and is afraid to say the wrong thing, so he'd rather not say anything at all, or he's uncomfortable because he feels guilty somehow about your complaint, or he's thinking as a man thinks: “We would rather not discuss this.” Right? We would rather not talk about our problems. A man will think that in a man's mind, okay?
So again, we're going to understand them, learn what to do about it, and continue our conversation skills, B'ezrat Hashem next week.