Getting Him to Open Up

Men Made Easy
.

How to Stop Fighting With Your Boyfriend

Do you often end up in fights with your boyfriend.  Starts out as something simple and next thing you know he has shut down and you are talking to a wall or either you are yelling at one another.  What I am going to suggest as to how to stop fighting with your boyfriend may seem simple, but hear me out.

Understand him.  I work with couples who fight.  It's almost always about both parties not getting their needs met, but more times than not, it's the woman expecting her man to behave in the emotional manner in which she does.  This just isn't going to happen as a normal thing.  Men just aren't wired like we are.  They really want to make us happy and the more we fight with them, the more they feel like they aren't making us happy.  The more they don't feel like they are making us happy, the worse it becomes, they stop trying.  It's a vicious cycle.  You can stop fighting with your boyfriend though.  It's up to you.

Do you ever hear yourself saying any of the following to your boyfriend?

• You never______________fill in the blank
• You always act like this when_______________fill in the bland
• You never listen to me
• You don't do_____________fill in the blank.

In other words, you aren't getting your point across with words.  All they are hearing when you say or accuse of these things is that they aren't making you happy which will destroy a man's attraction towards you long term.  Men can tune out words, they have been doing since their mothers.  If their mothers would just give a tongue lashing and nothing more, they learned that was a small price to pay.  It's consequences that men pay attention to and actions.

I am not saying punish your man, but there are other ways to get what you want out of a man other than harping on him making  him feel bad about something.  Men aren't mind readers, really they aren't.

I have a couple that I work with.  By all appearances, he treats her terrible, or he did.  She wasn't getting her needs met and instead of going about it in a healthy way, she badgered him, thus making him feel not so worthy. It just got worse and worse. She was focused on her needs and had never considered his.  When she started understanding him better and what his needs were, she was able to turn the relationship around.  The all the time fighting couple, now rarely fights.

If you want to know how to stop fighting with your boyfriend, you first have to change how you react and respond to him as a man first.  He is a man first and always will be.  Men Made Easy.

Make Him Feel Like a Man and Draw Him Closer

Women today are more independent, we don't really need a man. It leaves a gap there, men do like to feel needed. It makes him feel like a man when you lean on him. He wants to be your hero, so below are some small things you can do to make him feel like a man. You get the idea.


* Ask him to walk you to your car. You need him to keep you safe.
* Ask him to kill all bugs. Look away when he does this.
* Get him to open a jar or lift something for you
* If you are watching a scary movie, bury your head in his chest during the bad parts
* If it's cold outside, ask him to warm your side of the bed
* Let him move any heavy piece of furniture
* Let him park your car or back it out of a tight place. Tell him he is a better driver.
* Any light bulbs you can't make it known you want him to change them
* Have him get rid of the wasp nest on your patio
* Get him to pump your gas
* Request that famous steak or burger he grill so well. Tell him you are craving it.

In essence what I am saying is appreciate him and the little things he does. Don't go overboard though. If he takes you to dinner, thank him, tell him you enjoyed it. Once is enough, you don't want to act like this is your first hot meal in years.

Praise him also. If he does something that makes you happy, tell him. If he takes out your trash, say, wow, thanks, I really didn't want to walk to the dumpster in the dark. Praise goes a long ways in making a man feel like a man and feel appreciated.

Affection is also a good way to make him feel like a man and make him want to be closer to you. Affection is also a good way to show appreciation. If he does something nice for you, smile and give him kiss or a hug. A warm receptive woman makes a man feel like a man and will bring him closer to you.

While men do love the independent woman, the one who doesn't depend on him for her happiness and center her world around him, they do want to feel needed. A man who feels needed will be more likely to open up to you and move closer. Independent women are great, but a ball buster type woman who does everything for herself and doesn't need a man isn't what he is looking for.

Not All Men Are Jerks

Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.

Do we often have unrealistic expectations of men and how a relationship is supposed to be? I think we often do. Learning to accept others as they are can be the key to happiness. Do you toss your best friend aside even though she does some things that irritate you? I doubt it. We accept the flaws of others, we all have them, so are men excluded in this concept? Are they not human too?

Men are different, that is a reality, they are raised to hold things in, not show emotions, deal with problems on their own. Their communication techniques, levels of intimacy, need for space, etc..., are not the same as ours, never has been, never will be. They have a right to these differences whether they suit our needs or not.

How many times have you stewed in your life time because a man did not behave the way you thought he was supposed to. Maybe he forgot to call, maybe he did not take out the trash, whatever. One of our biggest frustrations with men is our inability to get them to do what we think they are supposed to do. We use "shoulds" and "supposed to's" as if we were the supreme beings in a relationship. The key to getting along with men well in general is to accept the answer to the question I asked myself. "Who the hell gave women the right to set the rules, to make their needs more important, and to decide how men should or are supposed to act or respond in a relationship?" Is that really fair? No.

Men have a right to be themselves. They have needs too! I think we as women sometimes get so caught up in what we deserve, what we feel entitled to that we miss the big picture. They are an equal part of the relationship. Men consistently say the one reason they hesitate to get into relationships is because they do not feel they can live up to our rules and expectations. Have we become like that? Have we lost sight of the ability to see men as who they really are, because they may not meet all of our expectations?

We have seen that trying to change men often means losing them. It's more effective to find ways to respond to his differences that we can feel more comfortable with. By lessening his importance, his differences can seem less irritating. After all, our happiness shouldn't be too dependent on what we get from him. That doesn't mean we should sell ourselves short, but is it time for us to accept that men don't have to change because we have a specific image of what we want. Men don't deserve to be labeled as jerks because they don't do things the way we want them to.