The miracle is this....

[sage]

Happy Friday everyone...having a day and a half at work Bad news is that I had a tense/unpleasant discussion with my boss and others this AM (none of us were doing good DB'ing!) -- good news is that we all got over it, I dodged a bullet as far as an important presentation (got it pushed out three weeks!) and I just made an offer for someone to join my group and they accepted within 5 minutes. Whew. Can I go home now?

"Errand night" went pretty well...we did the walmart stock-up thing and then went food shopping. Then we came home, ate and I ironed and put up some curtains that I bought a few weeks ago. It felt really good to get stuff done! Part of me feels lame for having to schedule this sort of thing but part of me was also losing my mind because I was internally stressing about how much there is to do and how little time there is to do it! h seems fine with it but I have to admit that I felt on edge for the early part of the night.

Weekend is going to be busy but good...not sure what we're doing tonight...h has a meeting at school tomorrow for the Law Review...I'm going out to lunch with my dad...then tomorrow night we're going to a midnight movie! Sunday we'll likely hike then h is going flying with his brother...I've got some cooking to do and a whole stack of new books from the library to read.

School starts 3 weeks from Monday...as I told h the other day "I am so DONE with school" -- how unfortunate that I actually have three classes left until that is so! I hope my attitude rights itself

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Thought I'd post some notes from a book I just read (skimmed) called "Why Men won't Commit" by Weinberg. I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of the book -- I don't like the title much (what he's trying to explain is what can block commitment) and I also think it wasn't fleshed out well enough -- early on in the book I felt like he was making it seem as though men are without emotional reserves or capacity and that women should twist themselves into pretzels...

that being said...I do think that a generalization of his concepts is still applicable...in particular that when a man feels special, able to maintain some independence, trusting of intimacy and certain of your loyalty that he is more willing to commit.

Notes from “Why Men Won’t Commit”

All men have:
The need to be special – to be appreciated not just as “a man” but in a personal way.

The need to travel light – some sense that he has control of his own time, money and decisions about where he goes and with whom

The need for loyalty – he needs you completely on his side

The need to be close emotionally – he’ll feel deeply hurt if he feels closeness is missing

The need to be special:
“See me as I really am, not only as I pretend to be”

He longs for a woman who accepts both his strengths and his weaknesses and who knows more about him than anyone else does.

See him as he really is and encourage him to reveal his true self to you

Present yourself as interested, able to listen and not critical

Treat him as an equal – not too high! If he gets the sense that you see him as perfect, he’ll want to keep that image going.

The more relaxed you can make yourself the more comfortable he will feel about revealing himself to you.

Be positive about yourself and he will be positive about you. Don’t second guess yourself. Don’t apologize for anything in your life. Speak positively about other people.

Any question that invites him to elaborate on how he feels about something will qualify as an attempt to get to know the real him.

Don’t ask about “vital statistics” – ask about feelings.

Stay in the here and now. Let the present occupy you fully.

Discuss what matters to you in your life right now and he will talk about what matters to him.

Your ability and willingness to see your man as an individual is primary because you can’t really love someone unless you see who that person really is.

Men stay in love when “the woman I love sees me and loves me as no one else ever can or will”

Need to travel light:

Men’s need to travel light is excessive and symbolic. He needs to see himself as a “free agent”

You man will watch for signs of what life with you will permit. He interprets things as whether his freedom will continue or be snuffed out if he commits himself to you.

Getting what you want while he travels light – you can actually use your man’s neurotic need to travel light to your advantage. He’ll be so thankful for the space that you give him that he’ll want to make you happy.

Just as your man may feel irrationally cornered if you ask him on Tuesday to pin down his weekend, he can feel disproportionately great if you offer him some small freedom.

Keep a fair balance of giving – he is terrified that he will be asked to change from “independent to caretaker”.

Men see making money as a sign of virility. For men, money equals potency and poverty equals impotence to a degree that women find it impossible to understand. Help your man to see that to you money is something used not to offset the cost of a bomb shelter but to enrich your life. Let him see that you care about balancing the relationship just as much as he does and that you are willing to pay what you can to enrich your lives together. There’s a thin line between letting him build his ego by helping you and allowing him to give too much after which he will feel bad. Patrol the balance and things won’t get out of hand.

Don’t be an emotional heavyweight—conversation may feel natural to you but your probing emotional questions can feel unnatural and burdensome. Limit the time you spend discussing what you don’t like. Spare him the regular role of telling you that things are better than they seem. Be careful not to ask for too much reassurance. Doing this forces him into an emotional territory that he may not wish to visit at the moment. You have the right to ask him sometimes. As with negative feelings, personal insecurity often cures itself when you don’t announce it. Lighten up if you can. Don’t make statements that are actually thinly disguised questions. To your man, traveling light signifies that he is still an individual and that you two are freely choosing each other and not tied together in a knot. No man wants to feel trapped. Allow a full share of separateness. Trust your man to come to you naturally. Don’t steer too much or he won’t come at all.

Make sure that he has time for himself – In his propagandized mind, the difference between a man and a boy is that a man can decide what he wants to do and can spend as much time as he wants doing it. The less he feels a demarcation between “before you” and “after you” (in terms of activities he can do) the better he’ll feel. He’ll also gauge how easy it is for him to escape from you when he needs space. If you can resist the paranoid reaction that every time he backs off the relationship is over, it will help both of you.

The need for loyalty:
Taking a chance on real closeness is by far the biggest gamble of his life. He needs to be convinced of your sexual loyalty, your loyalty to who he truly is (apart from what he brings to the relationship) and your loyalty to his presentation in public.

Show him that you are loyal to his special essence which will never change.

Remember to keep emphasizing the personal qualities that made his attainments possible (so focus on him not on the attainments)

Show that you understand that his challenges are the same as anyone else’s.

Never tell a story in public that makes your man look bad. Let him tell the story if he wants to. If you can legitimately praise your man publicly for a trait that he takes special pride in, you are showing loyalty beyond the call of duty.

Even when arguing try to avoid making general statements that attack the image of himself that your man wants to present to the world.

He wants you to love him unconditionally and he wants you to help the world see him in the best possible light.

The need to be close emotionally:
Remember the highs and lows of your mans ongoing life.

We love people whom we make happy, whose lives we improve. Let him know that he is improving your life by his freely made investments of love and caring and he will want to do more of the same.

Show him that he doesn’t have to watch every word he says to you. Don’t brood. Try not to hang onto injury or anger in response to anything he talks about, even if it’s something that has you upset for the moment. If you find yourself so angry that you can’t forgive him for something, try to talk it out with him.

Don’t seize on good moments either – simply enjoy them. Let your man see that you have no desire to wrench huge commitments our of momentary displays of caring. Give him confidence that if he missteps he can fix things instantly.

Create an atmosphere in which subject matter can change quickly, in which either of you can go from a serious subject to a laugh to something irrelevant then back to a serious subject. The key is emotional availability – the ability to respond to the other person’s mood and need.

Emotional availability – the ability to alter an outlook so as to stay in harmony with someone else (he also uses the word “inflexible” to describe the opposite)

Aim for an atmosphere in which your man can see that you won’t be critical of him almost no matter what he tells you about himself. Remember the value of being positive about people in general – how can he tell you he was once briefly married if you criticize divorced people as stupid or irresponsible? How can he tell you that he turned down a good job he didn’t feel ready for if you are complaining that your colleagues have no guts if they shy away from a promotion?

If you seem able to identify with other people and are open minded, he is more apt to come forward (why do I think that being SELF-critical will also block his disclosures??? Because if we’re perfectionists about ourselves, how can they live up to that?)

Even if you dislike what you heard, you needn’t say so immediately. Live with the information for a while.

Remember that whenever a man tells you something he wouldn’t ordinarily disclose, he is watching very closely to see how you react.

When your man comes to you with a problem, don’t feel that you have to offer him a solution…far more important is giving him time to talk.

Try to understand and learn what your man’s “personal myth” is (this is the deepest, most firmly entrenched way that he sees himself). Note what he tells you about his special dreams; see what things hurt him most when people challenge him – these identify components of the myth.

Anyone can love us for their own reasons but we want to spend a lifetime with someone who also loves us for the exact reasons we love ourselves.

The ultimate bond that leads to marriage is a respect for each other’s self-image.

Men are often embarrassed to say how much they want to feel part of a loving family.

Sex:
When your man feels sexually accepted and wanted, a spectacular kind of bonding occurs

You look to sex for pleasure, intimacy, to be closer. But your man, along with these motives, makes love to prove he’s a man, as if the verdict isn’t in yet.

Surprisingly, the key is to stay focused on what you want and what you enjoy. Your being open, loose and having a good time will make your man happiest if he’s even a halfway caring person.

Try to make sex a dream world. Give sex a place of its own – a refuge where fantasy and reality meet. Trust the sexual experience to speak for itself. Never use it as a deliberate device for any purpose.

He has the fantasy of a woman who wants him and wants sex with him for who he is.

Friends/Family:
If you really want to make your friends/family hideous intruders into your love life, quote them in an argument or use them as leverage (“most of the people at the party thought you were awfully quiet and wondered what was wrong”).

Arguing:

The key to being effective in your arguments is to stay relevant (to the point) and never withdraw support for any of his four basic needs.

Never compare your man unfavorably with other men as a device to make a point

Never make more than one criticism at a time. A single enhancement suggestion here and there is fine but a sweeping self-improvement program will activate his worst fears of being confined and remade.

Never convey that he had no idea what he was doing before he met you.

The most usual form of disloyalty during an argument is to enlist other people to support you. This is a horrendously bad idea. Quoting your friends and family to him during an argument will appear as a betrayal.

The two most damaging insults in fighting are sarcasm and sexual insults. Sarcasm has a way of resonating in the other person’s brain.

No matter how angry you get never slash at your man’s personal myth, his vitally important vision of himself and what could be.

The first rule of arguing: Allow your man to go on liking himself, even while you are contesting him on some point. If he treasures something about himself, why would he want to spend his life with a woman who calls that picture of his into question?

In closing:
Don’t forget that your own self-esteem and fulfillment are most important. Find a balance in which your man is fulfilled and also in which he appreciates your needs and wants to fulfill them too.

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Hmmm...as I was editing that for the BB (putting in the colors) I started liking the sum total of what was said much more...I think it must have been some of the way the ideas were presented in the book.

Why is it so hard for me to see that preserving, respecting, lauding, appreciating h's view of himself, his "essence", his "personal myth" is so key? One of the particular challenges for me, I think, is understanding truly what his view of himself is (what is key to him? what viewpoint of himself is most important?) and how to preserve uncoditional acceptance for those key areas even in the face of contradictory behavior...

IOW, one of h's hot buttons is not being trusted...being queried...ok, so perhaps I brought some bigtime negativity to the M. by being untrusting/paranoid/etc -- not "getting" it -- but now isn't the ultimate challenge somehow still preserving that image, protecting it, given what's happened? And yet, isn't it somehow critical for us to both be able to view h as capable and committed to loving me, fidelity, preserving our M, etc?

I'm just babbling

Sage