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Relationships

Opposite Emotions Self Help Guide

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I have put together a handy page of Opposite Emotions Self Help Guide. This is extremely useful for any self help or self improvement exercise where it is good to be clearer about the negative emotions you are feeling and what the opposite feeling could be. The idea is to use it to help you change negative emotions to positive emotions, so that you can move ahead with your life.

It is only a rough guide as we may all have a somewhat different sense of what our feelings are about and how to work with them. I especially made it for the Four Steps to Forgiveness exercise, but it works for many other thing too. Please use and enjoy it here.

What do Men Really W ant? Not Needy or Clinging Behaviour

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A woman friend of mine was recently complaining about the man in her life. What the complaints boiled down to was that he was not doing the kinds of things she thought he ‘should’ do. For one thing, she felt that if he loved her he would send her a phone text message every day.
Bizarre as this example may seem, it serves to illustrate one of the classic problems women run into with men. This has to do with having a set of expections and then putting pressure on the man when these are not fulfilled.
My friend’s boyfriend had started to get distant and unavailable. It turned out that she had been putting pressure on him to text her more often and I pointed out to her that this may well be the cause of him distancing himself.
As soon as a woman starts to put pressure on a man to modify his behaviour she needs to be very careful that it is about something important as she might lose him because of it. It takes a lot of effort for anyone to change their natural behaviour. The man in this example was not really inclined to send lots of text messages. Trying to push him into it would have two negative affects:
1) it turns something playful into a ‘have to’ and takes the fun out of it.
2) he would wonder what demands she would put on him next. (Don’t underestimate this one as it can have a lot to do why men will often resist even small requests for change).
It is much better to negotiate changes in behaviour by encouraging the behaviour you want. This is especially effective if you keep the following in mind:
1) It is much more powerful to ask for what you want than to complain about not getting it. “Can you please…”, sounds so much better than a whiney “You should…”.
2) It is much more powerful to praise the behaviour you like rather than complain about the behaviour you don’t like. “I really like it when you …” is miles ahead of “I hate it when you don’t…”.
Notice, please, what I am focussing on here is man’s personal styles and preferences not major behaviour problems (such as very aggressive behaviour or deep depression) which do require very clear and specific intervention.
Behind my friends expectation/demand for ‘text message every day’ was an unmet emotional need. This would come across to the man as ‘neediness’ and that is often what is behind men ‘running away’.
If my friend becomes conscious of her need and the nature of it she could then handle it much better. If she discovered that it was really a need for reassurance she could look to other ways of meeting that need either by a) meeting it herself b) accepting other forms of behaviour from the man which she would also find reassuring.
Trying to get other people to change is always a bit of an uphill battle. Better to change ourselves and then see what happens. We may find that the other person will change anyway, or that we don’t need them to change after all.
‘Needyness’ is the result of acting out needs of which we are not properly conscious. Learning to understand our own needs sets us free from needyness, because as we learn to understand needs we naturally see healthier way to meet them.
Yet, many of us avoid honestly looking at our needs in case that makes us more needy – the opposite is true! We cannot handle what we do not see and we do not see the things if we believe we dare not look at them.
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What do men really want? What are you offering!

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A women recently wrote to me via my free dating site to ask, ” What do men really want!”.
Well let’s have a go at answering from the perspective of a heterosexual man.
What a man wants (from a woman) all depends on the man, his stage in life and his mood at that moment. However, it also depends on what is on offer.
Men sometimes find it baffling that a woman will wear something revealing and then be offended when a guy takes time to really look at what she is showing. If a woman wears, say, a revealing top it is very tempting for a man to want to have a good look at the marvels on display. Yet, many women get offended if he does.
“Goodness”, he wonders, “She wants me to look as her hair when she spends time on it so why not the other bits too….”
Of course, I’m being flippant here. Most sensible men understand that a woman hates to be oggled. However, his basic instinct is to oggle so why encourage it if you don’t want it?
Most men, deep down, really want a healthy relationship with a healthy woman. A leading male guru, who helps men get better at dating women, says that around 80% of men who come to him do so they can win the heart of that special women when they find her. The majority of men are not wanting to get into dating as a game, but to find a life partner.
If, however, a man meets a woman who dress style says ‘I am hot for sex’ – where do you think his focus will go? Of course it might develop into something deeper, but such behaviour will tend to attract men who are mostly interested in what is being advertised – sex. And, it will tend to distort the attitude and priorities of men we genuinely interested in a life partner.
The fashion industry confuses the picture as sometimes the current fashion is to reveal a lot. This can cause a wave of befuddlement in men as they try to think with a part of their anatomy not suitable for thinking processes. “I would like to find a nice girl…oh wow… look at that hottie…hey darlin’…”
Some men are only interested in women for sex. No matter how a women dresses, or the wonders of her charm and intelligence, sex will be foremost on the mind of that kind of guy. But, that is really the minority as such an attitude tends to be – at most – a passing phase for the majority of men. However, it can be a recurring passing phase.
In dating you tend to get that for which you advertise. If a woman ‘advertises’ herself by emphasising her sexual attraction she will experience the results of that. If she downplays her sexual attraction somewhat (at least on the first date or two) and emphasises her personality then she will stand a much better chance of either attracting a man who is looking for something deeper, or of bringing that out in some of the men she meets (“Hey, maybe I ought to quit playing around and get serious with this one…”).
More on this topic later…:)