“He’s always hanging out with his friends!..”
“I just don’t feel loved or appreciated”
Sound familiar??
I was coaching a lovely client of mine the other day and we were touching on the topic of how to get her man to give more to her and make her feel more loved. For a long time, she’s been feeling like her partner keeps putting sports, work and friends ahead of her and she doesn’t feel like a priority at all and this makes her feel unloved and unappreciated. This tends to come across as a pretty sensitive topic in a lot of relationships and hence I thought I would write up this blog to help those who are facing this exact scenario.
The example above is very common and chances are that if you are reading this blog that you either are experiencing this, have experienced it or know of someone who is experiencing it. I know how hard it is and how scary it is. Relationships are without doubt the greatest source of pain and pleasure in one’s life and when the love that we have with an intimate partner is threatened, fear is brought to the surface. Often in this situation, the female partner often is the pursuer in the relationship trying to seek answers and the male partner often retreats and tries to get his needs met elsewhere.
So the first question we need to answer is this – what does he need?
To sum it up, he needs to feel needed, to feel validated, to feel significant. If he doesn’t get that in a relationship, he’s going to retract cause he genuinely doesn’t feel like he can make you happy. This is the very core of it all!
Then the second question is – how do we address this situation?
The answer is simply to give!
Now I know that most of you are reading this thinking – how on earth can I give when I’m getting absolutely nothing in return? This is the very battle that most couples face in relationships. The relationship becomes an exchange. I’ll do this if you do that for me. That very mindset is going to lead you into a lot of pain down the line because you are not setting the foundations for love. You are setting the foundations for a trade and a trade is as good as both parties are contributing. But as soon as there is a perception or an interpretation issue in the relationship, then its likely that one party is going to fail at giving what the other party needs. To add to this, very few relationships have any real idea of what each other needs and hence, they fall short of expectations.
The massive attack song says it best:
“Love Love is a verb, love is a doing word”
We spend most of our time fixated in what we are getting in a relationship rather than what we are giving and if we are fixated on getting, then the relationship simply won’t last. Either that, or you will become room mates very quickly with a lot of resentment, anger, frustration and eventually repression.
Now I need to stress- I am by no means blaming women for this. I can assure you – guys make a LOT of mistakes – thats for sure. I’m just explaining to you, from a guys perspective, part of the challenge that a lot of men face in relationships is that they keep doing everything wrong and they cannot make their women happy.
If you can take a little time to focus on how to meet his needs and you do it from the heart, I promise it will come back to you in spades.
Remember – Love is about giving, not getting.