How to Talk to a Man So He Will Listen

advice: relationship john gray

Communication. It’s typically at the top of couples’ lists — especially women’s — when it comes to relationship issues.

If most everyone wants to communicate better with their partner, why is it so difficult?

It comes down to this: Men and women give and receive communication differently. 

In the post below, you’ll discover how to talk to a man so he will listen, how to fulfill the communication needs of today’s relationships (it’s different than a generation ago!), and how to create passionate polarity to inspire intimacy for a lifetime.

 


Why Is “Communication” Such a Common Problem Today?

 

I talk to audiences all the time and sometimes I'll ask my audience, "How many of you have been divorced?" And over half the people raise their hands.

Then I say to my audience, "How many of you, when you grew up, your parents were divorced?" A much lower number raise their hands. That's starting to change more in the next generation.

Then I say, "How many of you who are divorced had better communication skills than your parents who stayed together?" And they all raise their hands. Of course, today we feel we have better communication skills than our parents.

So, if communication skills are everything to make a relationship work, why are we having so many challenges?

Because the communication skills our parents used that had worked in a role mate relationship, don't work today in a soul mate relationship where you have a conscious woman and a conscious man.

The conscious man is free from the limitations of being a role mate. He says, "I want to be all of who I am." And the conscious woman says, "I want to be all of who I am." So, instead of being in the bedroom, with two people, you’ve got four people: you’ve got him, his male side, his female side. And you've got her, her male side, her female side, all four. And that's who you're living with — and we need to learn to create peace with all of these.

 

Making Room in Your Relationship for All Four of You

 

For my parents, basically what happened is my dad had a good job, so my parents were never in a survival security place. My dad went to his job. He worked hard. He made enough money so my mother could do what she wanted to do.

Her dream was to have children (she had seven children). When they all grew up, she then had her own part-time job and raised her children and continued being a mother. She was a very happy lady, very traditional. My dad was very happy. He had his job. He came home. My mother didn't expect anything more from him. All she needed was for him to have good manners and not to get angry with her and he gave that to her. What more could you want from a man?! is what women used to think.

But once a woman is no longer limited by just her female side, she's liberated. 

This started happening in the '60s. As women started saying, "Hey, I've got a male side. I want to be more independent. I'm more detached. I'm not so emotional. I'm a big problem solver. I'm competent. I'm capable. I'm tough. I workout. I exercise every day and I’ve got muscles."

All that is women going over to their male side. It feels good to go over to the male side — it feels strong, empowering, liberating!

When you go over to your male side, it’s important to come back to your female side. The most powerful way to come back to your female side is to feel balanced. When you find that balance, your stress levels go down. When you're out of balance, your stress levels go up.

 

It's really simple: 

  • You’ve got a male and female side.
  • When you're too far on your male side, you will be overwhelmed.
  • You will feel resentful, exhausted, stressed, and depressed.

 

You’ll feel all those things as you stay too far on your male side because you're not connecting with another part of you. When you suppress who you are, there will be stress. So, when women go too far to their male side, they're suppressing their female side.

All this suppression causes stress, but at least in my mother's life, she was suppressing her male side. It didn't cause that much stress because she's a woman. But when women suppress their female side and express their male side, they're suppressing their female hormones that regulate her stress.

The greatest source of stress for women is when they suppress their female side. 

The greatest source of stress for men is when they suppress their male side.

And as men can go to their female side and women can go to their male side, we're more stressed than ever before.

So, what's the answer?

 

Emotionally Undress to Empower Your Relationship

 

For women, you have the ability to come back to your female power by doing one of the things that's more feminine than anything else: sharing.

  • That is basically emotionally undressing.
  • That's opening yourself up.
  • That's letting a man hear and see with respect.

 

He has to listen with respect, with empathy, with compassion, and with understanding. When you can unfold the layers of who you are in the presence of a man, that's what intimacy is about.

And as a woman, you're feeling like, "Oh, I want to know what he's feeling. I want to know what he's thinking."

What you're really needing at those times is for him to know what you're feeling, what you're thinking.

It's for him to go into you, not for you to go into him. 

If you go into him, you'll feel a connection and then you'll get turned off to him. He'll be like this wimpy, needy person.

Instead, when he goes into you, you feel like, "Oh my gosh, I feel more feminine. I feel happier. I feel safe."

But you have to feel safe enough and you have to trust — and trusting is to risk. You have to risk opening up in the presence of a man and communicating so that he will hear you.

And, of course, women go, "Oh, my husband's not interested," or "Oh, he ridicules me."

He says, "That's ridiculous. You shouldn't feel that way." He tries to solve your problem. He minimizes you.

Why?

Because he doesn't understand that this is your female side!

How you get a man to listen is by opening up and sharing because when you can open up and share, he comes into you with understanding, with caring, with empathy, with respect.

The estrogen, and the oxytocin that is produced, is massive and it will lower your stress levels. It will allow you to feel the love that he has for you. But unless he can enter, you can't feel it.

You have to slowly open up layer after layer. This is a process.

I call it Venus Talks.

And this is how it looks...

 

Venus Talks: How to Talk to a Man So He Will Listen

 

Women often say, "I want men to show their feelings."

Women, I say this with love, you're the biggest suppressors of feelings!

You have eight times more emotions than men do. Under moderate stress, you can measure the blood flow, and eight times more blood flow is going to the limbic system where the emotions are.

And women are feeling anxious, afraid, angry, frustrated, disappointed, afraid, ashamed. All of these emotions are going on like little fluctuations all the time, but she has learned: push it down, push it down, push it down.

Particularly in the work world, you can't reveal any of that because it will be seen as weakness. So, it makes sense to push it down but what you're doing is pushing down your feminine nature, which is more emotional.

 


NOTE:  Women are more emotional. In the wiring of the limbic system, emotions get activated twice as big in women than men. It becomes eight times more active, under a little stress. Under big stress, women detach, they become like men who have, under moderate stress, pulled away from their emotions to rebuild their testosterone. If he loses his confidence, then a man becomes more emotional than women. But at a normal level, women are more emotional.


 

So, you come home from normal stress, and if you share that without the tools of a Venus Talk, then to your partner it looks like complaining or over-reacting. And he’ll respond in the discouraging ways you’ve experienced in the past.

But if you use the tools of a Venus Talk, you will experience something new.

 

Here’s how:

  • Talk about what happened today that makes you feel frustrated and occasionally use the term, "I felt frustrated because... "
  • Then talk about what happened that was disappointing. "And I feel disappointed because..."
  • Then go into what your concerns and anxieties and stresses are. "And I felt concerned that... " or, "I feel concerned that... "
  • And then, if you're really good at this, you can go even deeper in sharing yourself and it's like, "Oh, my gosh. I forgot to do this, and this, and this. I feel so embarrassed that I didn't do this and this."

 


This is all vulnerability.

As you come back to those emotions and can share those emotions, a man connects with those emotions in his own way.

He may not be able to fully relate to everything you're going through. But when you share an emotional kabang, you've got a man connecting with you. 

You've got the male and female energy coming together and you will experience a massive dose of coming back to your female side because you've got a man there to provide for you. 

This is an amazing gift. It's called the Venus Talk, and you can set it up like this:

You come home, you go on a date with a guy, whatever it is, whether you're single or married, and you say, "Oh, gosh. I'm so glad to see you."

Already his testosterone goes up, then you say, "I just want to download my day. It will only take a few minutes, maximum 10 minutes. You don't have to say anything. Don't say anything, actually. I just want to share what happened today."

And then start sharing your experience.

Share your real experience, your real emotions.

My daughter, Lauren, calls it, "Too much information or TMI." Share the details. Don’t judge your words or feel you have to have a good reason for saying it (that’s your male side talking!), just start the faucet with TMI and share. With practice, this becomes easier and easier. You have a brain that can do this!

 

Train Him to LOVE This Communication

 

You want to make this a regular thing to satisfy both your needs for communication so you can have a happy, lasting, fulfilling relationship! This will take practice and training.

Your first step is to make sure that when you share your negative emotions, it’s about your life and none of it has to do with him.

If you complain to a man about him, he can't listen anymore. You cannot hear someone criticizing you without your stress levels going up. And if his stress goes up, blood flow stops to the front part of his brain, where he really can feel empathy and understanding for you. Which is the fulfilling exchange of a Venus Talk!

So, forget about ever complaining to him about him; instead, complain about other things. He will listen to you. He will feel greater empathy for you. He'll feel more bonded to you. He feels like he's giving you a gift and contributing to your world.

And how does he feel like he's giving you a gift after about eight minutes of complaining about other things?

Tell him how much you appreciate that he was there for you. He listened and now you feel so much better! Tell him and then go in for the hug. Give him a little count to three, (one, two, three), just let it connect and then say, "Thank you."

And if you're at home, walk into another room. Why? Because you don't want him to try to fix or solve anything. You want him to be in that space where he goes, "What just happened? I did nothing and she thanked me. I made her happier. She feels better. I like this."

And over time, he really learns to listen and trust that you have the power to explore your negative feelings and come out on the other end and be positive. 

And by listening, he helps that process and it can be a tremendous experience of intimacy.

 

New Communication Skills for Intimacy

 

The most masculine thing, the most testosterone-producing thing a man can do is actually to be silent and listen.

And for women, the most feminine thing she can do is to express how she feels.

For a man, also the most feminine thing he can do is to express how he feels: "I feel like this... " or, "I feel like that... " and complain. That's his feminine side. If he needs to express his feminine side, he should go talk to a bunch of men — particularly not complain to her.

If she needs to complain about him, she should talk to her girlfriends and get clear about it. Come back to her heart, lower her stress by complaining, then identify what it is she’s really needing from her partner. And then when she’s feeling loving and supportive, briefly say to him, "Hey, by the way, next time would you do this for me?" Because always at the bottom of a complaint is a request.

These are new communication skills.

And as you learn them, you can be assured that you will continue to grow in love, and support each other.

Passion is possible, but we have to learn how women can come back to their female side and what she can do to bring out his male side. And as she understands these new challenges of the conscious man, the conscious woman can get what she needs as well.

 

Grow in love,

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