The third most common reaction women have when they experience the imbalance of emotional role reversal is to long for their men to talk more and share themselves in traditionally feminine ways.
A woman in this third stage longs for a man to open up and share his feelings the way she would if she were in balance. It is as though she wants him to be feminine before she can feel safe in being feminine.
These women fully believe that they would be fulfilled if their partners would only open up and be more sensitive and vulnerable. This longing for men to be softer and more sensitive is really a replacement need. It covers the women‘s real longing to be more sensitive and soft themselves.
This longing for men to be softer and more sensitive is really a replacement need. It covers the women‘s real longing to be more sensitive and soft themselves.
Just as the overweight woman replaces her need for love with the need for food, or the woman who “does too much” replaces her need to be supported with the need to support others, this woman replaces her need to be feminine with the need for her partner to be feminine.
These replacement needs are not deliberate choices but are reflexive reactions that occur when women are required to function like men without the support they need to he feminine.
When a Woman Doesn’t Feel Safe
A woman in a loving relationship may feel unsafe because she feels unlovable or because her partner hasn’t yet learned how to make her feel secure. Regardless of why she doesn’t feel safe, when she can’t express her female side, she will automatically move to her male side and exhibit more masculine traits. To find balance, she will begin to crave a more “feminine” partner. Generally, the man she chooses is already more sensitive and open. In some cases, though, he is originally a less sensitive man, but over time she tries to make him more feminine by demanding that he open up and share more or become more domestic. This reaction occurs because the woman doesn’t have a clear picture of how to get the nurturing support she needs for her own female side. She feels driven to support his female side.
Why Women Initiate Conversation
Instinctively she feels “If I can listen sympathetically to his problems and feelings, he’ll listen to mine. If I can fulfill his feminine needs, he’ll fulfill mine.” While this formula works with other women, it does not work with men. By revisiting the distant past, we can understand where this tendency originated.
As we’ve ascertained, through daily supporting the female side of other women, a woman was assured of their reciprocal support. The tribal code was: “I scratch your back by listening to you, you scratch my back by listening to me. If I am there for you, you will be there for me.” This remains one of the basics of female communication.
When a Woman Wants to Talk
I can tell when my wife really has something to tell me because she inevitably asks me lots of questions. For example, when I return from teaching my weekend seminars, she will sometimes be particularly interested in seeing me and asking lots of questions. This is a signal that she has a lot to share. I now understand that after answering a few questions, I am supposed to ask her questions about her weekend.
By cracking the secret feminine code, I have learned to give Bonnie what she‘s asking for. Before I understood how we were different, the same situation would turn into a major argument.
She would ask me questions about my weekend when she wanted to talk instead of simply telling me what she wanted to share. What I really wanted to do was relax quietly. But I could tell she wanted me to talk, so I would try. When I look back at those times, I can see that it was like pulling teeth. The more she wanted me to talk, the less I wanted to.
After a few minutes of answering her questions as briefly as possible, I felt as if I’d answered her questions (as a gift to her) and then would go relax and watch TV (as a gift for me). Little did I know that this was not what was expected. Now she was even more upset. Not only had I resisted her questions, I wasn’t asking her questions in return.
The process only became positive when I could read the signals and begin applying advanced relationship skills. Now when Bonnie asks me lots of questions, I talk a little and then ask her lots of questions. If she is still not talking, I gently persist. Once she gets going, I let her do most of the talking because it is her need more than mine.
Never talking more than a woman as a general guideline counteracts the tendency to go into emotional role reversal. Certainly, on some occasions I will talk more, but when I begin to notice it is happening a lot, I pull back and focus on assisting her in opening up.
