Transcription
Thank goodness gracious. Okay, so we're being streamed simultaneously on Instagram, and I don't have a lot of time. Um, so I'm gonna dive into this thing that happened while I was on vacation. And thank you for being here. The two of you are here. I know there'll be other people over there, but just you showing up for me here on Zoom, it, um, yeah, provides something. It's, I, I, it's, it's not the radio. When I had a radio show, I thought it'd be awesome, and I ended up hating it. So, um, so I'm here because Tyler posted something while I was on vacation, um, and he reposted it today, so everybody would know about this. Just cut to the chase. The bottom line is, men marry the women who are being their wives.
Now, as with anything ever that's either recorded in writing or video, there's always missing parts, right? There's always missing parts of the communication, and including exceptions. Um, for example, from time to time, men marry women due to an overwhelming need. Whether it's in, they're overwhelmed by physical attraction to that woman, and, and it makes us stupid. Chemistry makes men and women stupid. Um, or there's something that they need that they get from that woman that trumps everything else, and so they'll just give up everything else. It's not a good formula for a lifelong relationship, but it does happen. And oh boy, I'm gonna have to keep admitting some folks. I have that, I have that job. Welcome, Brianna. So, so the exception to it is left out, and also the context is left out. So I want to fill in a bit.
And, um, and where that quote comes from is a course that we have called Understanding Love and Commitment. And originally, way back when, in the early 2000s, the course was called Celebrating Men and Marriage. And where, what I was speaking into culturally was a, the assumption that men don't want to be married, and that men are actively avoiding being married, and they're trying to get everything that they need without succumbing, um, or submitting to marriage. I'm very strong beliefs in men being non-committal, men being commitment-phobes was thrown around a lot back then. And I mean, it's maybe odd for people who are just showing up in my world, but I have been doing this since 1991. So I've been studying men the entire time, and then women, and then human beings, pre-gender, if you will. And, and one of the things that I learned that's really was shocking to me was the huge difference between what commitment is to most men versus what commitment is to most women. And Paul, it's great to have you here, and thanks for being my Insta panel, um, because there's a wide belief that women are committal and men are not. But what I discovered, yeah, what I discovered, and I'm going to talk about in the area, area of marriage, but it's actually all of life, is that as women, we have brutally, brutally compelling human instincts to bond, to survive through bonding. We have an enormous belief in connection, and we seek connection, both at an instinctual level and at what I would call human spirit level, where we have experienced profound connections, and we believe that it, that is going to be the source of our survival, is the quality of our bonds. And so there is a, a longing, a longing for what we believe marriage is supposed to be, this thing called married, that married means a lifelong bond, and it's going to make us safe, and may even have us prosper.
Now, from another point of view, if you can tie it on, and if you're a woman listening, you experience this some of the time, and most men experience this most of the time, and that is that the source of our productivity, sorry, the source of our survival is going to be our productivity. That how we're going to survive and even thrive is by being productive, by producing results, by providing what's needed and wanted. Now, this causes enormous conflicts, right? Because one, the compelling need to bond can have us in a constant search, if you will, a constant scanning, constantly scanning for connection, and who am I connected to, and how strong is our connection, and what can I rely upon because of that connection, and how do I have this connection progress? I had a date, we had a connection, how do I make sure we have a second date, and deepen the connection, and is the connections are going to progress, and then he's going to be my boyfriend, girlfriend, and then the connection, how we measure the strength of that connection is now we're engaged, now we're going to get married, and that's the measure of this connection, and that's the measure of how safe I am. And if this relationship isn't progressing with these forms, if you will, these titles, if these cultural rituals, if it isn't formalized by that, then I can't actually count on this connection, no matter the proof, no matter that he's always there for me, no matter that he's got my back, no matter that he's involved in my life and cares about what I care about, no matter that he keeps showing generosity and protection and comfort and interest, no matter that he's doing all these things that really would substantively give me the life that I'm looking for with another human being, if he's not willing to call it, if he's not willing to call it marriage, if he's not willing for us to say that we're committed, have some kind of ceremony, or live together, which is interpreted in a kind of middle place, in some ways it's interpreted as a sign of commitment, in another, in other cultures, it's, it's interpreted as a sign of avoiding commitment, so it's very iffy there. But if we're not having the forms and formalities that that put a name and an understanding and a ring on the finger, right, that shows everybody that this exists, then it must not really exist. It'll only exist if we can call it that. And if a man, in some cases a woman, is not willing to call it that, no, I don't want to get the government involved in our relationship. I'm never getting married, or I'm never getting married again. It has civil consequences. I'm not willing to interact with four, or as, as somebody I know. But what they said is, my experience is that marriage brings out the worst in people. It doesn't bring out the best. It brings out the worst. And it really can, it can cause what I call set it and forget it. Oh, now we're married, we can now pay attention to what we really want to pay attention to, instead of caring for each other.
And some of you may have heard me say in the last couple years, since my husband died, and I questioned if I ever wanted to be in another long-term relationship, that that I, is a mystery to me, how people get married with no intention of providing for the other person, what they've clearly stated they're looking for in a marriage. And yet, this happens all the time. That people get married without sufficient proof that this person can deliver love, honor, and cherish, right, in the way that I need to be loved, honored, and cherished. And without me having demonstrated that I can love, honor, and cherish them that way, that they have asked for that to be shown. But yet, we're going to get married, and we're going to hold each other's feet to the fire till death do us part. So some of you may have heard me say, when people will invest as much energy in loving, honoring, and cherishing day after day, then I'll sign up for that till death do us part thing again. And it's this conversation about, right, that you've got this little clip on Instagram, right? That the bottom line is, men marry the women who are being their wives. So unless he's overwhelmed by a need or attraction that displaces his normal, very logical thoughtfulness, which we were able to distinguish has 12 things. It's 12 things that make someone the right person to marry. There's so much thoughtfulness in it. So if those things aren't overwhelmed, what a man is naturally looking for is for someone who doesn't need to change, someone that they don't want to change, they're not going to try to change them, because she's already being exactly what they're looking for, spending the rest of their life with.
And what men don't know, and I'm so sorry, gentlemen, is that women come to a marriage with an expectation of change. I, I did it myself. I got married when I was 23 years old, and I was sure that the minister had fairy dust, and then as soon as my fiance said, "I do," he would become everything a husband is supposed to be, even though he hadn't been it at all up to that moment. I thought it was like a magic spell, and he would become a husband. Like, if you think of animal husbandry, right, husband means to care for, right, to literally to care for another human being, to care for an animal, to take care of, to be count honorable for the care of another human being. And it's fascinating to me because I've interacted with so many men about being married, and, and I've heard so many times, "Well, I, I want to be married eventually. I want to be married, but I can barely take care of myself right now. I have no business taking on taking care of another human being." And they're, they're really honest about it. They're clear about their own capabilities. And when they'll say they're not ready for marriage, women interpret, "Oh, you're not, you're not ready for monogamy. You're not ready to be a responsible human being. You're not ready to grow up." No, they're being honest. "I don't experience myself as capable of taking care of you the way I believe you deserve to be taken care of." And when men are saying this, we'll argue with them instead of, he's probably an expert, more of an expert on what he's up for than I am. And besides, after we get married, it'll all teach. And then when it doesn't change, we're furious. We're just furious. But it's because we didn't really pay attention.
So the other side of it, and this is something, oh my gosh, confronting this myself, the truth of it for myself, there's so much power in it, but it's not pretty. And that is that when a man commits, okay? When a man commits, imagine, imagine like, imagine this is a woman that he's interacting with, and he's attracted. This is just my mouse, right? This is my mouse. And, and he's interacting with her, and there's this attraction, and there's something really special about her. And imagine you're not being in his life makes him feel kind of sick, right? But he's gonna keep circling around to make sure, have I seen everything I need to see about her? Can I give her what she needs? Can I make her happy? Does she like me? Does she not disempower me too much? Are we going in the same direction? Do we have compatible values? So we'll make decisions and have a good chance of being aligned, right? How's the level of our communication? What happens when we have problems? Or we haven't had any problems yet? I better wait. He doesn't know she's hiding the problems, right? So he's circling around to having the best evidence he can, we can, that we can do this. We could succeed at this. We have an excellent chance of succeeding at this, given who I am and who you are, and where you're going, and where I'm going. You and me could be a week. We could be a week. And then, you know, his friends might say, "But she's got a temper." Yeah, she's got a temper. I got that. She's got a temper. That's just how she is. Yeah, but she's really ambitious. Yes, I've taken that into account. Where her ambition is taking her, and I can see there's some things that I'd have to give up, and I'm willing to give them up. And there's some other things I'll gain by it, and that'll be good. And the support she needs, so far, I've been able to provide it. I've been what she needed. I have proof of that. Oh, okay. So then what he does is he buys the whole package. Everything she is, and everything she isn't. And he hopes she's not contingent, including the things that would make his life easier if she changed. He doesn't expect her to have. Even had men say, "Well, my wife and I got married, we struggled the most with sex, but I thought if that's the worst problem we ever have, we'll have gotten off easy." He had eyes wide open. He didn't expect it was going to change after marriage. He expected together, we're gonna work it out, and we'll have a lifetime to do that. And I'm willing to take a life. So men do what I call buy the whole package. And what they're looking for is how does she relate to me? And how does she relate to me in good times? And how does she relate to me in hard times? And when we have problems, does she attack me that I'm the problem, or do we stay on the same team and solve the problem together? These are all things that men are looking for, whether they can articulate it or not. Which, by the way, their ability to articulate it is a function of testosterone. And later in life, they'll be able to articulate it very well when all the parts of their brain are connecting to the verbal centers of their brain, and they can say things that were always there that they couldn't favor for.
Now, on the other hand, and this is the part that was hard for me to confront, is women don't do that. Women don't buy the whole package. Now, we think we do, because we'll have this huge emotion. "But I love you! But I love you! We should get married! I love you! And don't you love me? We love each other so much!" Anytime we love anybody so much, we want to make it permanent. Why do you want to make it permanent? Because it seems like if this, we make this permanent, it'll feel safe. This emotion will feel safe to have. There's a container big enough for this overwhelming emotion. If we're married, it'll be safe to feel this way. But meanwhile, on a daily basis, we have things that we're making a list of that are going to change about him after we get married. "No more of that. We won't be having any more of that." And we'll even be telling our girlfriends about what he's going to have to change after we get married. And we don't actually, I'm sorry, but I have never witnessed someone with ovaries buy the whole package. We actually don't commit in that scoop up kind of way that men do. And ladies, you know what I'm talking about, because we feel it. We feel it when a man has committed himself to us, and we breathe more deeply, we relax, we even become more real. We'll even show sides of ourselves that we think he didn't already know were there. But men are way more perceptive than we give them credit for. As women, we commit differently. And just check this out for yourself. We commit one acceptance at a time. Literally, one acceptance at a time. Okay, he's gonna tell that joke for the rest of our lives. Okay, I'm not gonna try to change that about it. He's gonna like that forever. Oh, no, he's not. Really? One acceptance at a time. It's his beard. It's his face. He can change it however he likes. Shape part of it, none of it, all of it. It's your face. He's gonna do what he wants with his face. Oh, no, he's not. I'm going to be telling him, there will be no more of that around here. And we really, really, that's gonna fly. But honestly, could you respect a man that let you shape him like that? You're gonna think he's a weakling, and then you're not going to feel safe, and you're not going to be attracted to him, and you're not going to have sex with him. It's going to blow up anyhow. So we have to, if we're going to be grown up about this, right? We've got to interact. We've got to bring these things to the surface. And it, it sounds strange because Dan and I have promised to never give the other the ultimatum, "Marry me." But we have more commitment that we've developed in the last two years, because at the conscious level of interacting with, "Okay, so that's how you are, or things I've asked to make it seems like you need. Is that, is that true? Because if you need that, I'm the wrong person for you. So think about it. Could you live without that for the rest of your life? Let me know in this honesty, and in what can be accepted and not accepted." And it, it even, I mean, it started from the very beginning before we ever met. And then one of the things that was so hot, we, we just met in person. We've been interacting on the phone for like a week and a half. We already knew we wanted to find out who we could be for each other. We committed to an exclusive exploration of who we could be for each other. We weren't going to date anybody else. We just were just so curious, given how it already been. And we'd, we'd met for the first time, and he was driving, and I got scared about how he was driving, and I was trying to figure out a way to ask him to drive differently. And I, I was so scared, and I couldn't figure out a better way. And I finally just asked it the way that I asked it, which was so covert. And he said, "That feels like criticism to me, and I stopped taking that a long time ago." Oh my gosh, that was so hot. [Laughter] It was like, "Oh, I just loved it. I love that he stood up for himself that way." And then I burst into tears. I burst into tears because the elephant Armstrong just criticized. Ridiculous. If I did that, why did I do that? Why did I do that? Oh, oh, I did that because I was scared. That's why I did that. And I, I said, "I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. And thank you for saying that. I, I did that because I was scared." And he had the most surprising reaction. Astonishing, astonishing to me. So he's driving, right? But he, he's had many concussions, so he's had to figure out how to remember stuff, to make his brain act right. And he was now learning me. And now he's tapping, he was tapping the steering wheel, right? It's a mnemonic tool. He was tapping the steering wheel. So he's writing his underneath. When she sounds like that, she's scared. When she sounds like that, she's scared. When she sounds like that, she's scared. What are you doing? Because I just want to remember. When you sound like that, you're scared. So how about next time you sound like that, he said, "Next time you sound like that, how about if I ask what's scaring you?" And I, I, oh my gosh, it was so beautiful. But I also laughed. And like, you know, I can already tell you, really quick, you'll probably catch on really fast to what's scaring me. And you already know what's scared me. And he's like, "Well, that would be good." And I said, "I have another idea. How about I just say, 'I am scared'?" "Oh, that'd be great." And, and so the next time I found myself strategizing, trying to figure out a good way to ask him how to drive differently, I remembered it, and I just blurted, "I'm scared because you're following that car so closely." Did he argue with me? No. Did he say, "That's stupid"? No. Did he justify following the car so closely? No. He just backed up. He said, "I'm sorry I scared you." Then you just cracked off. I think Chris Isaac's driving. I just owned, "I was scared." He protected me, which he could protect me because he didn't have to protect himself from me, because I wasn't attacking him. I was owning, "I was scared." And he fixed it. I don't know if you can see this, the acceptance in it, the ownership in it, the staying on the same team, the pulling for each other. They're not trying to change each other to accommodate us, but to pull towards better versions of ourselves. That instead of criticizing, I cough up, "I'm scared." Right? And this is what I mean by, men marry the women who are being their wives. However they define that. Now, in the response to that on Instagram, there are a whole bunch of assumptions that were expressed about what wife means, and that I was saying that if a woman's being that assumption that wife means, then a man will marry her. No. The man who's being the wife, he's looking, the support he's looking for. I once coached a couple that were so incompatible, it was stunning to me. And I asked to talk to them separately. And I asked the man, "I'm sorry, but why did you marry her?" Wife. He said, "Because she punches all my buttons, and I knew that would make me grow." What was he looking for in a wife? He was looking for someone who would make him grow. He wasn't looking for peace. He wasn't looking for comfort. He was looking for unconditional support. His priority was to grow, and she made him grow more than anybody. So he married her. She married the woman who was being the wife that she was like. So, am I telling you to be the wife that he's looking for? No. If I'm telling you to be you, be the man that you are, be the woman that you are, and, and keep telling the truth about it. Until the, you're the perfect person for them. No, I don't, I don't need or want you to change. I've, I've confronted how you are, and I, anything I can't accept, you already know about and have agreed to change. And everything else, I'm, I have accepted. And when stuff shows up in the future, we'll keep interacting with it the same. And Dan and I, we, we're not married, and we don't live together. And our agreement is, we're going to be together for as long as we can give each other what we need, including that I can give him what I need to give, and he gets to give to me what he needs to give. Because that's what makes a relationship fulfilling. Getting what you need keeps it from being frustrating. Getting to give what you need to give, who you really are, is what makes it fulfilling. That's why it takes both sides, what you need to give, and what you need to get. And our, the most upsetting relationships we're in is where we, we have this emotion that we love them so much, but we're not allowed to give what we most need to give. And for sure, it's not treasured. We really need our gifts to be treasured. So when you're thinking about that someone's being non-committal, and if only they would commit, everything would turn out. But are your gifts being received? Are your gifts being treasured? Do, do you need them to change for you to be happy for the rest of your life? Or if they stayed the same, or even gave less, because there are times in life when we can, we can't give as much as we could give as other times. We all go through hard times, and we have less to give. Is, is less, is less still better than you could possibly imagine? I remember, I've said it to him more than once. I said, "Dan, I would tell you you are a dream come true, except I couldn't have dropped you." Okay. I know I've been fire hosing, y'all. But that's my response to the response of what Tyler posted on my vacation. And consider a gift when a man says, "I'm not the right person for you." He's saying, "I can't give you what you need, and I can't make you happy." That is an honesty to be treasured, to be appreciated, instead of a bait and switch. "Oh, let's just get married, and it'll all turn out." No. [Laughter]
One of the strongest things that I'm advocating for men and women all the time, from your first interaction, whether it's an online where you say, "Okay, great, we've connected. What I need next is to talk to you," right? Or, "Yes, I would love to meet you for dinner. I need to be home by 10 a.m." From your first interaction, express something you need, and then listen and find out how they react to it. And find out, do they care about what you need? Do they care? "Oh, by 10 o'clock? Okay, then we should go to a different restaurant so you can get home on time." That's a good sign, right? If they're like, "Well, that's stupid." The end. Just say, "I wish you well," and hang up the phone, because they don't care about what you need. And we think we're gonna build lifelong reaction, lifelong relationships with people who don't care what we need, because the attraction is just physical. And physical doesn't care. Emotional care, spiritual care, tears. There's so much caring available between men and women, but not as long as all we're paying attention to is chemistry. Chemistry has no caring in it. Chemistry's pure biology, pure perception of strength and fertility. But everybody wants this hot chemistry, and then this deep, profound caring, lifelong relationship. And we're even trying to get physical relationships to be lifelong. They don't have what it takes. Ah, so if you keep showing a man you don't care what he needs, you keep making fun of what's important to him, and then you think he's a jerk because he won't marry you. Look closer. Look much closer.
And if you're a man, and a woman keeps telling you what you need, and you can't relate to that need, and therefore you're not going to provide it, and you try to have a logical conversation with her, she's the wrong person for you. You are the wrong person for her. Because women need things that are mystifying to men, and men mean things that are seem ridiculous to women. And if we're not willing to respect what the other person needs, whether we agree with it or not, there's no way we're going to make it turn out. We can't, we can't make it turn out if we have to agree with their needs, agree with their boundaries. And we need them to agree with ours. Are we going to respect them even when we don't understand them? That's what long-term takes. Most of us aren't prepared to be that grown up. We want to just, "But I love you, and you love me, and everybody knows love is all you need." And everybody who's ever been married can tell you that's baloney. And in fact, the 12 things that make a woman the right person to marry, love isn't one of them. That would be the 13th. [Laughter] But they never talked about it. What makes someone the right person? They never said, "I love her." They never said that. Love is the easy part. Men love women. They love us because we're women. They, there's no, is she the right woman? That's a harder question. We'll even love at first sight. Yes. All these panels of men, do you believe in love at first sight? The man who picked the question said, "Absolutely. It happens to me a couple times a day, seriously." Women need to do very little to get men to love them. We need to stop doing a lot of stuff to get men to stop loving us. We're really good at getting ready to Scotland by attacking because you expect them to act like one. Okay, I'm really gonna stop now. But I could talk for months, as you some of you know, hundreds of hours. But it's time. And I'm here because I care. And I, and I, um, and I actually appreciate being unfollowed. Um, Tyler was shocked. I've never been unfollowed before this post. And I like being unfollowed. It means it's not a good fit. And I, I want to tell you what I told him, and it may have you unfollow me, and that's okay. The benefit of how I view men and women, and my commitment to figuring out how to work this out with the least amount of pain and suffering, is something extraordinary, something exquisite, is love and kindness and generation and caring that really did and can last till death do us part. I did that right up until the last moment before my husband died. I was expressing appreciation for him. Seriously, moments later, he had a heart attack that we didn't know he was gonna have. So the things that people say they want, I really have figured out how we can have that, even being stuck in human bodies or human instincts. But there is a steep price. And the price, I, I've seen it for all 30 plus years I've been doing this. The price is righteous indignation. And so many of us, in the face of feeling powerless to cause the kind of relationships we want, we settle instead for an illusion of power that is righteous indignation. And we can end up in tribes. We, we gather in tribes where we have a shared righteous indignation. But it's not a substitute for real power, for the ability to cause the lives we want. And if someone wants to get righteous, then I should be telling men what, what they should be doing. I tell them plenty what they should be doing. But I tell men what they should be doing. If I tell women what men should be doing, they just get more righteously indignant. So I don't. I'm always speaking to the person whose underwear you're wearing or not wearing at this moment. I want to empower you. And if you want to unfollow, I wish you well. Come back if and when you want to know what's your part, because I'm always going to be talking about your part. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here live. I feel like your love, your support, yes, yes, yes. It means all the difference in the world. Thank you. And love to all of you on Instagram, and all of you who watch this later.