Happy Life with a Russian Wife

Posted By admin on March 19, 2010

“Forget everything you’ve heard about frankness, sharing your feelings, getting him to express his,” says Barbara Graham from “O, The Oprah Magazine” Indeed, research into the functions of the male mind makes it clear that discussion may be the fastest way to shut down communication. (Oh, you noticed that, have you?) Today, we suggest you to read her article “How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It” hoping that this information will be interesting and useful to you and your loved ones.

“When I first heard about the book, I thought it was a gimmick. How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It sounded like a title somebody’s prankster husband dreamed up after a rocky couples’ therapy session. When I mentioned it to Hugh, my own husband — who in 22 years of marriage has never once said, “Honey, we need to talk” — his face lit up like the Fourth of July. Needless to say, I was suspicious. What about the vast repertoire of communication skills women have spent decades perfecting? Were Patricia Love and Steven Stosny, the psychotherapists who coauthored the book, advising us to forget everything we’ve learned and rethink how we relate to our partners?

The answer is yes — and they’re not kidding.

“The number one myth about relationships is that talking helps. The truth is, more often than not, it makes things worse,” says Love, a tall, lean redhead with a down-home Texas twang and a generous smile. She is cofounder of the Austin Family Institute, and leads workshops around the country when she isn’t making television appearances or cowriting books, including the best-selling Hot Monogamy.

“Talking about feelings, which is soothing to women, makes men physically uncomfortable,” says Stosny, the Maryland-based author of You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore and an expert on male aggression. “There’s literally more blood flow to their muscles. They get fidgety, and women think they’re not listening.”

We’re relaxing in the sunroom of my house in Washington, D.C., on a golden autumn morning. I learn that it was Stosny’s research into the core emotional differences between the sexes that radically altered his thinking, as well as the way he works with clients. When he shared his findings with his friend and colleague Pat Love, they rang true to her, even though they flew in the face of the verbal problem-solving approach she’d been using for 30 years.

According to Stosny’s analysis of several hundred human and animal studies, male and female responses to stress are distinct from birth. “When a baby girl hears a loud noise or gets anxious, she wants to make eye contact with someone, but a baby boy will react to the same sound by looking around, in a fight-or-flight response,” he says. What’s more, while newborn girls are much more easily frightened, boys have five times as many “startle” reactions, which are emotionally neutral but pump up adrenaline. Boys need to intermittently withdraw into themselves to keep from becoming overstimulated. These differences hold true for most social animals and correlate with our biological roles: The female’s fear response is an early warning system that serves to detect threats and alert the males of the pack to danger.

As girls grow, they go beyond needing eye contact and refine a coping strategy identified by UCLA psychologists as “tend and befriend.” If there’s a conflict, girls and women want to talk about it. Boys and men, however, need to pull away. A man’s greatest suffering, Stosny says, comes from the shame he feels when he doesn’t measure up—which is why discussing relationship problems (i.e., what he’s doing wrong) offers about as much comfort as sleeping on a bed of nails.

So, I wonder, does this explain why, when I reach out and tell Hugh I’m feeling isolated from him — on the assumption that this will foster closeness — he gets defensive or withdraws? Do my verbal attempts to reestablish intimacy make him feel inadequate? Is that why he gets that glazed look in his eye and is suddenly compelled to watch men tossing balls on TV?

Yes, yes, and yes, replies Love. And our responses aren’t all in our heads. When a man feels shamed by a woman’s criticism, his body is flooded with cortisol, a stress hormone whose effect is decidedly unpleasant. A woman experiences a similar cortisol rush whenever her husband shouts at her, ignores her, or otherwise does something that scares her and seems to threaten their bond. Love compares the sensation that accompanies the sudden release of cortisol to sticking your finger in an electric socket, followed by the sort of “sugar blues” crash that occurs after you polish off a few too many glazed doughnuts. “A cortisol hangover can last for hours in men and up to several days in women,” Love says. “It’s no wonder both sexes try to prevent it.”

Okay, this makes sense, but if talking about relationships makes men twitchy and drunk on cortisol, then what’s the alternative? Charades?

“It’s the connection, stupid!” exclaims Love, quickly adding that it’s not me personally she’s calling stupid. “Everyone — men, women, myself included — needs to learn that before we can communicate with words, we need to connect nonverbally. We can do that in simple ways, through touch, sex, doing things together. The deepest moments of intimacy occur when you’re not talking.”

Stosny puts it this way: “We need to stop trying to assess the bonding verbally and instead let the words come out of the bonding.” Interestingly, he adds, “When couples feel connected, men want to talk more and women need to talk less, so they meet somewhere in the middle. Being aware of the fear-shame dynamic helps.”

To be continued.

Categories: Empowering Each Other, Family Matters
Tags: research results, strategies to cope with fear, what man experiences when discussing relationships issues, What's the difference between a man and a woman