The New Male Sexuality (38 page)

HER
: I’m willing to call it to your attention if you forget occasionally, but I want to know that you’re taking this seriously.

YOU
: I am. I want to touch you the way you like. I’m going to follow through on this, and I appreciate your willingness to remind me if I forget.

You’re right if you think she’s going to be watching your progress with this, especially the first few times. You need to take whatever measures are necessary to make sure you carry out your agreement. Little aids can be a big help; for example, writing a note in your appointment book about what you agreed to do, or even putting a similar note on the bathroom mirror or on the nightstand next to the bed. Another aid is mental rehearsal. The more you imagine yourself touching her breasts in ways that are acceptable to her, the better the chances that you’ll do exactly that.

You can count on it, however, that you won’t always remember. Rather than assuming this won’t happen, it’s best to plan how to deal with it when it does, which is what the man in the last example tried to do.

UNDERSTAND THAT NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE RESOLVED

A huge source of bad feelings and hostility in relationships is failing to understand and accept that most issues in a relationship—any relationship—cannot be resolved. Understanding this surprising fact can prevent a lot of unnecessary frustration and conflict.

According to John Gottman’s research, only about 30 percent of the differences or problems in a relationship can be fixed or resolved. The remaining 70 percent are deeply rooted in the different personalities and histories of the partners and have to be accepted. You already know the kind of thing I’m talking about: one partner is more of a night person, the other a morning person; one more sedentary, one more active; one more interested in sex, one less so; one more outgoing, the other more introverted; one more organized, the other less so; one more a spender, the other more a saver; one more impulsive, the other more restrained; one neat, the other messy.

When you choose a romantic partner, you’re also choosing the problems that you’ll have to face for as long as you’re with her. Most of them cannot be fixed, and it’s highly unlikely any are going to disappear.

What’s needed in these situations is to find ways of accepting and dealing gracefully with the unresolvable differences. You need to be able to talk about them, because they come up all the time, but to expect an end to them or a resolution is to court serious relationship distress. As one of my clients put it, only half jokingly, after years of work with a number of respected therapists: “I guess I need to accept that this ain’t gonna change, ain’t gonna be different, no matter how many shrinks we see. The week before we die I’ll still be wanting more sex than she. So now it seems the big question is, how do I handle this in a way that helps our marriage instead of hurting it?”

That’s a good question, but the answers are beyond the purview of this book. Suffice it to say here that you need to learn the difference between resolvable and unresolvable problems, to resolve those that can be resolved, and accept and be able to manage or regulate those that can’t.

KEEPING IN TOUCH

In the first edition of this book, I suggested that couples have a regular time each week to discuss their feelings about the state of the relationship. The reason for the suggestion is that a major problem in relationships is
feelings, complaints, and issues that don’t get dealt with. They get swept under the rug but continue to cause trouble. It can help immeasurably if couples have a definite time each week where each partner feels free to bring up anything he or she wants. This prevents anything festering for more than a week.

You can still do this if you want, but I have found that it’s not necessary provided the couple spends a fair amount of time together each week and takes at least a few minutes each night to catch up with one another. With this kind of togetherness, they can bring up complaints, concerns, or anything else whenever they want.

You and your partner can choose either way, but my experience is that you have to have one or the other.

Despite what I’ve said about preventing and minimizing conflict, it cannot be entirely eliminated. Even the happiest couples sometimes get furious with each other, sometimes can’t talk to each other, occasionally even wish they were alone or with someone else. I hope you feel relieved to know that even in the happiest couples, there is anger, there are loud voices, and there is distance—but not frequently and usually not for long. And therein lies a tale. The rest of the chapter deals with ways of not getting too far away from civility and sanity, and for healing the hurts as quickly as possible.

CALLING TIME OUT

Taking a time-out is perhaps the big gun—the biggest gun short of getting professional help—in romantic relationships, and it should be used whenever necessary.

It makes no sense to continue with conversations that have parted company with sanity. If nothing else works and things are falling apart—that is, the conflict and negative feelings are increasing, both of you are angry or yelling and not listening, and your pulse is racing—you can always call time out to stop the craziness from escalating further. This signals that the two of you need to take a break and get into a better frame of mind before continuing. It can do a lot to prevent conflicts from getting unmanageable.

John Gottman has demonstrated that when people’s pulses go over about 100 beats per minute, they are overwhelmed and not exactly at their
best. The part of their brain that makes them human is being short-circuited and they are doing their thinking, if it can even be called that, with the same little part of the brain that a snake or mouse has, and I’m sure you don’t see many truly civilized snakes or mice. There is simply no point in going further at this juncture. It’s better to put a stop to the activities and to find your humanity again. Gottman also found that men get overwhelmed in interpersonal confrontations sooner than women—which is why they often try to leave the situation—so it may well be you who needs to call most of the time-outs.

If you like the idea of calling time out when things are getting out of hand, you should discuss it with your partner and get an agreement to use it. Either of you can say “time out” whenever you feel that discussion is turning into argument. The harder part is for the other partner, the one who didn’t call time out, to stop talking or screaming immediately. But this has to be done for the exercise to work. Once a time-out is called, there is no more talking. Each of you does something to calm down: take a walk, do some work, think things over, or whatever you like.

There are two important considerations regarding what you do during the time out. First of all, put a frame around it. That is, if you are going to leave the room or the house, don’t just walk out, because that will probably cause your partner to feel more anger and perhaps to feel abandoned as well. Tell her what you’re doing and when you’ll be back. For example, “I’m going to take a bath to try to calm down. Be back in thirty minutes,” or “I need to take a walk. I’ll take the dog with me. I’ll be back by ten-thirty.” Of course, you need to be back when you say you will.

The other important thing about a time-out is what you do in your mind. Gottman found that many men walked around the block muttering to themselves, “I don’t have to take this crap.” In other words, they kept reinforcing their bad feelings and came back in worse shape than when they left. This is not a good idea.

The goal of a time-out is to calm yourself and get into a more loving space regarding your spouse so that you can work out the problem. Telling yourself that she’s a mean bitch or that you don’t have to put up with her isn’t going to help. On the other hand, reminding yourself of the good times you’ve had with her, her qualities that you like, admire, and love, and things like this can help immensely. Even leafing through a newspaper or magazine for half an hour can help. When you’re feeling better, you should consider how you might say what you have to say in more constructive ways.

How long should a time-out last? Five or ten minutes is usually too short to allow yourself to calm down. A half hour to an hour, or sometimes an hour and a half, seems to work best for most people. The sooner the two of you can reconnect and get to a more harmonious place, the better for all concerned. Often it’s best to do what’s necessary to feel close again, which may mean tabling discussion of the troublesome issue for a while. Once the two of you are feeling close, you can get back to it.

We now move to several measures that can help when you’re in the midst of confrontation.

AGREE, AGREE, AGREE

In any relationship there will be disagreements about certain issues. But the more agreement there is, the easier it will be to solve the problem. In many cases, the real issues don’t even get dealt with because the partners get into conflict about peripheral matters.

Say your partner’s very upset, claims you don’t love her, and accuses you of having an affair, but you’re innocent of the charge. Since she really blasted you, you probably come on just as strong. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m either at the office or here. When the hell would I have time for an affair?”

The real issue, I suspect, is not about affairs. My guess is that she’s concerned about the way you’ve been relating to her. Maybe you haven’t shown much interest in spending time or having sex with her. She’s worried about what this means and may be angry as well. So instead of saying, “I’m worried about us. We seemed to be drifting apart,” she accuses you of having an affair. Since you’re being attacked, you defend. And you know you’re right. You’re not having an affair, and you tell her so.

But now she’s in a bad situation. It would be terrific if she could realize she didn’t say exactly what she wanted to and make a U-turn. But maybe she can’t. So she may feel that she has to defend her accusation. She may therefore reply that she doesn’t know where you go on Sunday mornings when you say you’re playing golf or what you do on all those business trips to Boston. You may now feel you have to deny her accusation once again and perhaps account for your time in Boston.

But let’s say you caught yourself and decided to try something different. Is there anything in what she’s saying and implying that you could agree with? It makes no sense to agree to an affair if you’re not having one,
but are there reasons for her to think that you might be having one? In other words, can you understand what’s going on with her? Suppose you said this to her: “I can understand why you think I might be having an affair. We haven’t been close lately.” This amounts to agreeing with her concerns. Imagine the effect on her. She doesn’t have to defend or prove anything. Now she can get to what’s troubling her. And you haven’t lost anything. Rather, you’ve gained an opportunity for a serious conversation with your wife about what’s going on in your marriage.

Take another example. Your partner says: “You never do your share around the house. I’m sick of it.” A typical defensive reply would be to tell her she’s wrong and enumerate all the household tasks you’ve recently done. Then she’ll be forced to deny them (“Like hell you take out the garbage every week; you took it out only once last month”) or claim that you still don’t do as much as she does (“Big deal! So you take out the garbage. Do you know what I do every week?”). We are clearly headed for an unpleasant experience.

But suppose you decided to try something different and said this in response to her first statement: “It’s hard to admit, but you’re right. I don’t do as much as you.” This will probably stop her in her tracks. Now you can have a useful conversation about household chores, a common source of disagreement in couples.

I’m suggesting you seriously consider agreeing with your partner’s complaints and criticisms and thereby allow the two of you to get to the serious issues. Don’t allow yourself to get hung up on and defensive about whether you “never” do X, “always” do Y, or her choice of words. Since she’s probably angry or upset, you can bet her words won’t be tactful or precise.

“I object. This is the weirdest thing I ever heard. Why should I agree with my partner if she’s wrong?”

I understand that what I’m saying can sound very strange. It sounded strange to me when I first heard of it years ago, and I was reluctant to hear more. I was especially concerned because it seemed as if I was being asked to lie. It helped me to understand that was not the case.

The real request is to find something in your partner’s criticism that you can agree with. Maybe it seems surprising, but there almost always is something. No matter how outrageous her statements, no matter how exaggerated, there’s usually a strong element of truth somewhere there. In the illustration above of the man charged with having an affair, he wasn’t in fact having one. But he had been very distant from his wife, so there was reason for her to think that maybe he was. He did not agree that he was
having an affair, which would have been a lie, but rather to understanding how she could think he was, which was true.

Many people find it easier to agree with feelings than with content. After all, if your partner says she feels X, Y, or Z, there’s little room for disagreement. Acknowledgment of her feelings can help: “You’re really upset with me” or “You’re angry about what happened tonight.”

Even better is if you can validate her feelings: “I understand why you feel that way” or “You have every right to feel that way.”

Probably best of all is if you can validate her feelings and some of the content as well. “You’re right. I was nasty to your sister. I can see why you’d be upset.”

Although I’ve ranked these kinds of agreement in terms of good, better, and best, all are helpful. Any agreement is better than no agreement, and the greater the agreement, the less the chance of defensiveness and arguments.

Go over some arguments you’ve had with your partner and consider when you could have agreed with something she was saying. Then think over some complaints she’s likely to make in the future. This isn’t difficult. Most people can determine in advance what their partner will soon criticize. Then decide how you could agree with at least some of what she’s saying to make for a more constructive discussion about the issue.