Tag Archives: Feelings and Emotions

Maybe No One is Misbehaving

Have you ever thought your partner was wrong for being the way they are and then gotten angry because they won’t take your advice and they can’t be who you want them to be?

Maybe no one is misbehaving

I was working with a couple recently, and they weren’t seeing eye to eye about work. Elaine is working on a huge time consuming project that she loves, is taking care of her aging mother, and works as a life coach.

She spends a lot of time doing all kinds of things that she loves while her sweetheart has a job that he doesn’t particularly like.

Sam looks at her and sees her doing multiple things and wants to take care of her and help her to focus on one thing. So, he was saying things like, “Stop doing that,” or “Just focus on your project.”

But to her, just focusing on her project would be like death. She cares for her mother, she loves her coaching AND she loves the project she’s working on.

Elaine looks at Sam and sees him in a job that he hates. She hears him express his unhappiness about what he’s doing. She cares about him so she gives him the advice to do something that he loves, because that’s what she, as a woman, would put her attention on.

It’s all about life enhancement for women. So she encourages him to do something that will enhance his life. However, her input gets brushed aside because what he’s doing provides for himself and his son. He can’t see himself leaving his job until his 15 year old son is grown.

On the surface, it looked like they’re helping each other. But because they didn’t understand how the other one operated in the world, they were unintentionally hurting each other.

If this type of conversation gets a foothold in your relationship, it can mean breakup or years of frustration.

When we worked together, Sam began to understand that his sweetheart loved what she was doing, and the best way to support her was to make sure she was getting some quality down time to nurture herself so she could do what she loved.

Elaine got that the best way to support him was to plant seeds for him that would help him leave his job and move onto something more fulfilling when his son was 18.

Understanding how your partner operates in the world not only averts relationship disaster, it creates the foundation for a life of relationship bliss.

If you want to learn more about the instinctual differences between men and women and how to avoid letting them run your relationship amok, schedule a 30-minute appointment with me to discuss your unique situation and goals and what you can start doing right away to achieve them.

Click here to schedule now.

I’m here for you. I’m on your side. 🙂

To Love!

Schedule 30 Minutes Now

Kimi Avary
Relationship Navigation Specialist

Demystifying Men and Women’s Feelings

Everyone feels sensations in their bodies that they translate into emotions. Although the words “feeling” and “emotion” are often used interchangeably, they are not quite the same thing.

Emotions

Feelings are the physiological sensations in our bodies that we translate into emotional labels like anger, love, joy and a multitude of others. (The word “feeling” means a lot more than that, but for the purposes of this article we’re talking about feelings and emotions.)

What two people feel sensationally in their body won’t necessarily be described or even experienced in the same way. For instance, it is the same physiological sensation in the body that some people call fear, and others call excitement.

What you label your experience has a lot to do with how you perceive your experience, which has to do with your beliefs, values, history, and your “story.” It’s a matter of interpretation.

Men and women both have feelings and emotions, but it often doesn’t seem that way. That’s because men and women have very different ways of dealing with the emotions they experience.

Gals, have you ever asked your man how he was feeling and had him tell you he was “fine,” and you knew that wasn’t the case?

  • You sensed that something was going on, but you didn’t know what.
  • You saw him fuming and knew he was holding something back?
  • He didn’t want to talk about it?
  • The more you asked what was going on, the more aggravated he got?

Women are biologically wired to sense what is going on in their environment because it keeps them safe. There was a study done recently about women and eavesdropping. It was practically impossible for a woman not to hear what was going on around her. Knowing what’s going on with the people in her life and in her environment helps her to assess potential challenges and dangers.

For a woman, an upset or angry man is a potential danger, so she tries to assess the situation by asking questions. Women try to figure out what someone is going to do based on what they are feeling, because that’s the way it works for women.

Women tend to act on their feelings because they trust them implicitly.

Guys, women always want to know what you’re feeling about something because women feel something, and then they act on that feeling.

On the other hand…

Men don’t trust feelings because they generally don’t act on them. In fact, men who do are often ridiculed.

An extreme example of this is a man in a battle, he may be afraid, but he’s going to do what he thinks he should do, not what he feels.

To be seen as a coward is a fate worse than death. It would mean he would lose the respect that is vital to his manhood.

So when a woman is expressing her feelings, he may try to be empathetic, but most often, he’s really looking for the point as a way of helping her solve the problem.

  • Sometimes she’s just venting about a problem at work.
  • Sometimes she’s angry about something that her friend did.

Guys, there have been times when you’ve tried to help and gotten reprimanded. Right?

  • Sometimes she’s trying to get you to do something or change something.
  • Sometimes she’s hurt by something you did or didn’t do.
  • Sometimes she’s angry with you.

And if she’s upset with you, you’ll often see yourself as the cause of her pain. If it happens often enough, you’ll see yourself as failing at making her happy.

Gals, men will leave if they can’t make you happy. They see making you happy as their job.

I told my husband that it wasn’t his job to make me happy the other day, and he told me, “it works out better if I see making you happy as my job.”

It causes him to focus on doing things that I like and that make me happy, and he gets to be my hero, and then we’re both happy.

Now let’s look at how men experience feelings and what they do with them. They do feel, and they feel very deeply.

The way it generally works for men is that they feel something, and then think about what they are going to do with that feeling, and then they act on it.

Often what they do is totally contrary to what a woman would do given the same feelings.

The operative word is “think.” Men tend to think about what is logical to do in the face of the information at hand.

They think about whether or not it will help to talk something through.

If he doesn’t see an upside to talking something out, or sharing his feelings, he won’t.

Especially if he is afraid of something like not being able to provide for his family, he’ll keep it to himself.

In fact, for a man to share his feelings he has to feel incredibly safe with the person he’s speaking to. Men do not just act on a feeling the way a woman does.

Men don’t trust feelings.

  • If he thinks you’ll be upset with him for what he’s feeling, he won’t share it.
  • If he thinks you’ll think less of him, he won’t share it.
  • If he thinks he you will overreact and do something like leave him out of anger, he won’t share it.
  • If he thinks it might hurt his cause or foil his plan, he won’t share it.

Can you see how this dynamic might lead to immense challenges in your relationship?

For both men and women, it means the world to be accepted for who they are, but they go about it differently.

She reveals her feelings and he conceals his feelings.

The more she tries to pry it out of him, the more he clams up. The more upset a woman is, the more she tries to express herself.

When you have two people unable to share what they are experiencing, they begin to feel isolated in their relationship and their sense of connection deteriorates.

The way around this is to understand the the vast differences between men and women and learn to navigate those differences. The result is less time spent upset, frustrated and hurt and more time loving.

If you and your partner are having challenges connecting, it might be time for a Relationship Breakthrough Session. You’ll get focused one-on-one time with me and an opportunity to see what you can do to reconnect with your partner. There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain.
To Love!
Kimi Avary
Relationship Navigation Specialist

It’s not your Job to Fix your Partner’s Emotions

Everyone has good moods and bad moods. When it’s someone you aren’t intimate with, you can often easily let the person’s bad mood roll off your back and simply offer a word or two of support.

Handling your partner's emotions

However, in a romantic relationship because you’re more interconnected it can be harder to maintain that kind of detachment. After all, you share a home and your life. You’re managing jobs and possibly raising children too.

Our moods have to do with where we put our attention and focus. George Markowsky says that our “senses gather some 11 million bits per second from the environment… In other words, the human body sends 11 million bits per second to the brain for processing, yet the conscious mind seems to be able to process only 50 bits per second.”

That’s over 950 billion bits of information coming at you every day. Some of that information can uplift you, and some can send you into a downward spiral. Think about it, with those numbers, it’s unlikely that everything is all bad.

What we are paying attention to affects our moods. We’re actually designed instinctively to notice problems. That’s what’s kept our species alive, and it’s our default mode. With so much information coming into our senses, we can unconsciously let our attention focus only on unwanted experiences.

On the other hand, you can consciously choose to notice the information that uplifts you. It can take some practice, but the results will likely be more desirable than the alternative.

Now let’s apply this to your relationship. One of the reasons you’re with your partner is that you were able to build enough rapport with them to feel comfortable and fall in love.

That’s what we do as humans. We resonate with each other. There are electromagnetic frequencies radiating out from your heart to your partner’s, and vice versa. That’s how love grows.

Building rapport is about unconsciously, or consciously, matching the mood of the people you are close to. For better or worse. It’s great news if you or your partner is in an uplifted mood.

Dr. John Gottman says that couples that last are ones who let each other influence each other. Your partner leads, you follow. Or you lead, and your partner follows. You match: you connect: your relationship blossoms. It’s a sweet deal.

On the other hand, because you’re interconnected with your partner, their unpleasant mood can affect you too.

What do you do if your partner is in a bad mood often? What if you or your partner is in a downward spiral? Like Linus from Peanuts, with a dark cloud over their head?

If you match them, you’ll likely go down too.

What do you do if you don’t want to go down with them? You may try to help them feel better but, as you may have noticed, it can lead to frustration for both of you. What if your partner’s angry? You try to intervene, and you end up getting angry too. Or you try to avoid them, and it creates a wall of hurt between you two.

To learn what you can do to avoid getting caught up in your Partner’s experience, Download my 6 Steps for Dealing with Moodiness In Your Relationship (Special Report) Now.

6 Steps for Dealing with Moodiness Report 02-2015

To Love!
Kimi Avary
Relationship Navigation Specialist

If you have been experiencing challenges in your relationship, I offer Relationship Breakthrough Sessions for Couples or Partners Flying Solo committed to turning things around.

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