Jayce's thread

[Bagheera]

Thanks for the answer Jayce. I'm going to respond in what I hope will be seen as a constructive way, because there ia a pattern here that I wish to point out.

You wrote:

"Working on the Mars Venus book now. He won't read that either, trust me. He feels I'm trying to "change him 1000%", control him, say he's wrong, stupid...

The impression that I am getting from your posts is that he may actaully have a point, from his male point-of-view. You have MAJOR complaints about him in many areas:

* his career and job choices
* his health (back problems and smoking)
* his hobbies (his obsession over 1 hobby)
* his daily habits (napping, TV watching, beer/wine drinking)
* his inability to communicate and express his feelings / emotions, and of course,
* his libido.

And you seem to point out these fault areas to him often. It's a very Venusian thing to do, and a way for women to show that they care about someone (and are attempting to improve and nurture them), but this approach is abosultely the wrong way to get a man to change.

He will feel criticized continually ('nagged'). He will feel not good enough, NEVER good enough to please you. He will feel unneeded, completely unaccepted, and UNLOVED.

And as a result he will dig in his heels, retreat, disconnect completely from you, and will NEVER try to change. Why try? It won't be good enough or she'll move the target to something else that's not good enough for her.

Over the course of my own studies in the area of relationships, I have discovered many little ironies: little truths that underline the fact that in dealing with the opposite sex, sometimes the most effective way (or the ONLY way) to get what you want is to take an indirect, almost opposite approach to them. This is one of those ironies:

The only way to get a man to change for you, is to accept him and demonstrate that you love him EXACTLY AS HE IS. Once he feels loved and accepted, he will voluntarily, and of his own free will, begin to look for ways to improve himself and make himself better in your eyes.

This is a truism, Jayce. I know how this works personally, on me. If I feel under-the-gun by my wife, criticized, henpecked, and never able to please her, then I'm very likely to say "screw her" and do my own damn thing regardless of what she thinks. Rather than let her 'control' me (which is how it feels to a man), I'll assert my masculinity and prove my manly independence.

BUT....if my wife accepts and shows her love for me *exactly as I am,* my natural reaction is to look for ways to do better, to improve myself, to be her Knight in Shining Armor in even more and better ways.

-- B.