Domestic Violence Includes Verbal Abuse and Raging

There’s a lot of talk right now about domestic violence because a celebrity guy has beaten up his celebrity girlfriend. Sadly, these stories only seem to get ink when they involve famous people. In my recently published book, The Key to the Men’s Room: What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around, I give the reader a front row seat at men’s group meetings where men speak in their own voices about their issues. What women will discover is that men really do want to get it right in relationships with women, but that for the most part, they simply don’t know how.

But there is a larger issue here than battered women. Certainly battered women deserve all of our compassion and concern. No woman ever, ever deserves to be physically abused. There are no excuses for this type of dysfunctional male behavior. But there are reasons for it that need to be examined closely and discussed publicly. Since nearly everyone agrees that women don’t bring violence on themselves but are unwilling, unwitting victims, it is men and their dysfunctional behavior we should be talking about in terms of stemming the violence.

I watched several television programs after the Chris Brown/Rihanna tragedy and the most I ever heard anyone say about men is that batterers need to get help. That’s not very useful advice since it carries no meaningful message. Of course men who batter women need help, but what kind of help and where can they get help is of tantamount importance. There is a price tag for this kind of help that many men aren’t able to afford in tough economic times. That leaves many men out in the cold in terms of being able to work through their issues.

While my personal experience and expertise are more related to verbal abuse and raging, the causes of physical violence are similar. What I know about male anger and men abusing women is that what makes men act out in sordid ways is the unresolved pain they carry with them that lives in their psyches, their souls.

A man who rages at his girlfriend, wife, and/or his children does so because he carries inside of himself unresolved pain that frequently finds its way up from his troubled and damaged soul and inflicts pain on women who are completely in the dark regarding why they are being verbally thumped. I know about this first-hand because I was an out of control, angry man who raged at women in most of my previous relationships. Men who rage get out of control because when their unresolved pain rises up and lashes out at its victims, they are powerless to stop it or circumvent it. Since men likely don’t know what sets them off it is impossible for them to stop it from occurring. The rage runs its course and leaves devastation and a wounded woman in its wake. In tough economic times men will rage even more as they struggle with their issues and feel less manly in terms of putting food on the table.

It wasn’t until I started a men’s group 16 years ago that I was able to confront my anger in a meaningful manner. It was in my men’s group that I discovered why I was angry in the first place. I had been beaten and verbally abused by my father for most of my childhood. I never really knew why he raged at me both physically and verbally; I just knew that it hurt physically, but it wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I understood how it had affected me emotionally. I was a time bomb waiting to go off and all it took was an innocent remark from a woman to set the bomb off.

What I also learned in doing the work in my men’s group was that the more I talked about the abuse I suffered from my father, the better I felt about myself and the less I raged. The value of identifying the cause and talking through my anger with other men was immeasurable. I doubt I would have my anger under control today unless I had done this men’s group work. After several years of talking about being abused and thinking about what had happened to me as a boy I even managed to forgive my father which helped in my efforts to finally end my pain.

Very few men know about the opportunity that exists for men to reach out to other men for help and support. Very few men have intimate male friendships, friendships that allow men to drop their egos and open up honestly and authentically with each other. While the lack of this type of friendship can be traced to several places, fear of other men seems to top the list. Fear and lack of trust pit men against one another instead of helping them support one another.

Men need to find their inner heroes with the help of other men if they hope to stop the cycle of violence. A man needs to do the emotional work involved in identifying his issues so that he can be in a relationship with women that eschews violence and intimidation of any kind. I have watched other men heal themselves with the help of the men in my men’s group, so my story isn’t unique.

In the end, I believe that it is only men who can help other men heal their past wounds because male pain is unique to men. Men can and should get together with a group of men dedicated to helping one another heal their wounds. Absent that most men will continue to rage. There is a terrific opportunity for men to make the kinds of friends they don’t have in their lives, friends who they can call when their life begins unraveling, friends who care about their well-being. A men’s group can offer men that kind of deep friendship.

I am often asked by women what they can do to help men move beyond their pain. The best answer I can offer is to create a “safe space” in your relationship for your man to talk about his issues. That means telling a man that he is safe in talking about his issues because a woman’s only interest is in helping him move past it. It means that a woman never uses any information a man has shared with her about his painful past, against him in an angry moment. It means holding your man’s pain in your heart and respecting how difficult it was for him to share that pain with you. A woman who can hold a man’s pain closely and only with the aim of helping him will find that man willing to talk about many other issues in their relationship.

Divorced Women: How to Choose Your Next Man

You’ve finally gotten through the pain and suffering of your divorce. You’re beginning to think about your next relationship and you talk with your women friends about the pitfalls of dating. You don’t want to make another mistake and find yourself in a Groundhog Day scenario that plays out like your last relationship. The thought makes you queasy. In fact, it’d be strange if you didn’t feel anxious about dating again; because, next to death, divorce is the worst emotional experience a woman can endure.

So, what do you look for and what should you be wary of in choosing your next man? Your failed marriage should have taught you that you aren’t going to change him; so you need to look for what you want up front. At a minimum that should be the state of his emotional health. The single most important question a woman can ask a man she has just met is, “What emotional work have you done?” Don’t let him put you off or change the subject: no hedging, no procrastination, no glib dialogue about how cool he is—just a straight, look-him-in-the-eye-without-flinching question that requires a straight answer.

If the answer is none or little, beware. A man who hasn’t had the intellectual and emotional curiosity necessary to examine his life most likely isn’t going to be able to hold up his end of a relationship. In fact, he may be looking for a woman to prop him up emotionally so he won’t have to do the work. Continue to probe your prospective partner further about his last few relationships. Why did they end? What was his part in their failure? What did he learn about himself in the process? Listen carefully to his answers, keeping in mind that emotional maturity doesn’t correlate with education or financial success.

Another red flag is if he has no male friends. This lone wolf is a troubled man who has trust issues with other men—and may have trust issues with women as well. He may or may not be a tough guy, but what he definitely is, is dysfunctional. He’s looking for a woman to fix him, and you’ll become his entire world and life because he doesn’t know anyone else and he has no friends. This is an impossible role to fill, and you should never consider taking it on.

My 16 years in a men’s group have taught me that men can—and routinely do—change their behavior and become better men. The seven other men and I trusted and confided in each other and gave each other honest feedback about the appropriateness of our behavior. All became more successful in our relationships with women because we were willing to “own” our issues and address them. Without such a group of intimate male friends, a man lives in a vacuum with no mirror to reflect back his dysfunction. And, as a woman in relationship with him, you will suffer the consequences.

It’s true that there are fewer available men who’ve done their emotional work than those who haven’t, but this is so important to the success of a relationship that it’s well worth holding out for. So, make a pledge that your next relationship will be with an emotionally evolved man, or at least a man who’s doing the work. If you meet a man you feel something for, ask him right away about his emotional journey. Be prepared to walk away with a smile if he doesn’t measure up. He won’t ever be able to fulfill your needs, because he can’t fulfill his own.

If you want to know what kind of man you should be looking for, my new book, The Key to the Men’s Room: What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around, due out in October will show you. You’ll accompany the eight men in my group on their emotional journeys, hearing their stories in their own words. Each chapter ends with sage advice from Dr. Amy Bandera, a psychologist specializing in relationships and group work. She explains in detail how you can use what you have observed about men to improve your own relationship. Evolved men DO exist, and you can find one.

Why Do Women Stay in Bad Relationships?

I never met a woman who didn’t readily admit that she stayed in a bad relationship too long. I have asked many women recently out of dysfunctional relationships why they remained in them even though they weren’t working. While their answers varied the most often repeated one is that they hoped their partners would somehow realize the error of their ways and decide to become better men.

This just doesn’t square with what I learned working with men over 15 years because a man never changes his behavior just because a woman asks him to. No amount of coaxing or cajoling a man makes a whit of difference. A woman will unlikely convince a man that he is the problem even if he is. No matter what his issues are, anger, abandonment, isolation from other men, etc, a man will only decide to work on himself when the pain caused by his dysfunctional behavior becomes so unbearable for him that he can’t stand it any longer. Sadly, this awakening usually comes after his relationship failed. A savvy woman he might meet later knows immediately whether or not he has his emotional life together because she knows how and what to ask him.

Every day I read posting on various websites written by women who are exasperated by their husband or boyfriend’s behavior. His anger or his lack of interest in talking about their relationship is the most common complaint from women who can’t come to grips with the fact that his behavior is out of control.

What many women don’t know is that men don’t talk with them about their relationships because they simply don’t know how. The playing field that is the man/woman dialogue is so tilted against most men that the conversation is over as soon as it begins. It loses all meaning when a woman talks about how she feels about the relationships and the man responds with what he thinks about it. Anything beyond their opening statements is superfluous because they are talking entirely different languages. Speaking from the heart and speaking from the head are at opposite ends of the dialogue spectrum and no amount of time on that playing field is going to yield much of value.

So a woman who hangs in with an unconscious man while embracing the fantasy that he will one day wake up and appreciate how terrific she really is and work on his issues is wasting her time. In a decade and a half working with men I learned that few if any men knew how to access their emotions and even fewer could talk about them.

Women should accept that men aren’t going to change, aren’t going to talk about their emotions and aren’t going to become better partners until they sit down with other like-minded men and talk about their demons. Men can help other men learn how to talk about their relationships in language that is constructive and helpful. My new book, The Key to the Men’s Room: What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around is written expressly for women who want to understand men and their issues. I offer real men’s stories told in their own words and I trace their progress over a 15 year period. The Key shows women what is possible and what they have a right to expect.

A woman who stays in a relationship with a man she hopes will do the work is on a fool’s errand. She would do far better to find a man who has already done the work or is at least on the path. Asking a man what if any emotional work he has done is a good first question. A negative response should be enough for a woman to keep looking. Men who have done the emotional work are out there, but not in big enough numbers yet which might explain why for the first time in American history more women are choosing to remain single than marry. It would seem that there many women who have decided to pass on the futile experience that is getting men to evolve.

Male Anger: Counting to 10 is a Band-aid

Counting to 10 isn’t a substitute for identifying and eliminating the source of a man’s pain that makes him rage. This dubious folk wisdom merely allows anger to simmer in a man’s psyche, and while it may be temporarily knocked down after a 10 count, it won’t stay down for the count because its cause hasn’t been identified. Counting to 10 is a band-aid at best, and at worst can prevent men from learning to move beyond anger.

There are a myriad of sources of male anger. A short list would include: an abusive father, an abusive mother, being abandoned, and neglect. While there are other sources of male anger such as clinical mental disorders, these are the most prevalent issues I noticed in 15 years working with men. The biggest source of anger I routinely confronted traced back to dysfunctional father/son relationships. Those early life damaging emotional hits just keep on coming in later life and men often become lone wolves because they don’t know how to effectively cope with their pain. They withdraw from situations that might actually help them, like the companionship of concerned men practiced at helping each other heal.

Somatic body experience is not a simple or quick method to learn. It requires that a man tune into exactly how he is feeling in his body right before blowing up and identifying what he was thinking about right before he raged. It took decades before I learned about somatic experience, but when I did I began to notice the feelings that came up right before exploding. The source of my anger was never the woman I was in relationship with at the time and her proximity just made her a convenient target.

Since women are powerless when confronting angry men it would seem appropriate to address their options. A man committed to working on his anger in a men’s group is worth staying with in a relationship because he will find support for the work he needs to do but he will not find support for his anger because it is unsupportable by conscious men. He can discuss somatic experience with other men to learn how they pinpointed the sources of their anger. A man who is willing to hear other men’s experiences that helped them understand and overcome their anger and who can embrace their successes and incorporate them into his own life can benefit. Alternatively, a woman who finds herself with an angry man who refuses to dig deep and confront his anger should consider leaving him because he will never resolve his anger on his own. A woman who stays in a relationship with an angry man who refuses to work on his issue becomes his enabler and co-dependent as well as his convenient target.

Men need to wake up to their anger issues if they ever hope to be in a successful relationship and women can help put them on a good path by encouraging them to work through their anger with other men. A woman’s love provides the encouragement he needs to continue his work and finally overcome his demons.

My new book, The Key to the Men’s Room: What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around will be available in October. Male anger is but one of the issues men discuss in their own voices. Women will find it a treasure trove of information about men and male behavior.

Ken Solin

In Praise of Men Who Get it Right in Relationships

A friend suggested I write about men who have done the work and are adept at holding their own in a relationship dialogue with women. This seems fair since men who have achieved a higher level of communication are uniquely different and deserve to be heralded for it. For most this was a hard road to travel down.

What is true is that men who make the effort to grow emotionally with help from other men can hurdle their old stumbling blocks and express themselves in a manner that men and women both appreciate. They can speak from their hearts, not their heads in circumstances that require information about their feelings. Men learn this skill most comfortably with other men. The stigma of being second-best in a feeling dialogue with women is eliminated. 

My men’s group has worked on accessing our feelings for years and each man has made progress because each was willing to stretch himself emotionally with help from other men. They were willing because they knew they weren’t going to be judged, but honored for their effort instead. This lack of judgment encouraged them to continue building their skills. When men in my group become embroiled in an argument the resolution only comes when all the participants can talk about how they are feeling about it instead of what they think about it. Men need this skill to make their point with women and to eliminate circular arguments that never get resolved. Thoughts are debatable. Feelings are not.

Women are unanimous in their appreciation for men who can talk about their feelings and not just their thoughts. The leveling of the playing field makes all the difference in the world and it works equally well in dialogue with men. When I speak with my men friends and relate how I am feeling about something that’s going on in my life it is easier for them to understand what I am experiencing because they understand the difference between thoughts and emotions. In my men’s group, “get out of your head” means talk about your feelings, not your thoughts. A man who wants help with his issues will only find it when he is able to move the conversation deeper.

To the men who have decided to shed their stoicism, remove their masks, and join the ranks of other men who have learned how to ask for what they need, congratulations. You deserve to be acknowledged for doing the Herculean work to become better, more evolved men. To those who haven’t yet embarked on this journey my hope is that you will eventually realize that only by learning how to talk openly about your feelings are you going to get what you want in a relationship.

Warning: Newly Divorced Men

I have known several women who have had the misfortune of dating newly divorced men. They all say these fellows behave as if they just got out of prison. Leaving their sexual deserts behind they seek comfort. The notion that an actual woman is connected to the body they desire to assuage their parched sexuality is irrelevant. A good quality blow-up doll would probably suffice and it might spare his next victim the chore of dumping them once they realize how emotionally damaged they are.

The cocktail of anger towards women, sexual repression, not doing the emotional work associated with the pain of divorce, realizing they are out of dating shape, and rarely having anyone to talk with about their feelings, serve to put a man’s sad, crumbled interior on display. Only a woman who has been living in a cave for a decade would be remotely interested in dating this fellow who acts first, thinks second, and then, maybe, feels third.

After divorce, women seem to take time to consider what has happened and how they might avoid disaster next time. They feel their way through their misfortune and often don’t date for several months and in some cases, years.

When I was 30 I got into dating a week after separating, and while I had been unhappily married to an alcoholic, I didn’t take any time to consider my role in the failed marriage or the grief I felt about it. I was like a bull in a china shop, knocking women down like bowling pins in my attempt to find my next love. I recall meeting a charming woman at a cafe who when I told her I was recently separated said to me, “Call me in a year or two,” and walked out. I was shocked that she was so conscious of the pitfalls of dating newly divorced men until I realized she had probably learned her lessons the hard way.

The lesson for women is clear. Run, don’t walk away from a man who just left a relationship.

The lesson for men is equally straightforward. Stay home and think about your part in the recently failed relationship. Find another man or men who you can trust and talk with them about how you’re feeling. Ask how they handled themselves emotionally when they got divorced. Ask what they did that prepared them to re-enter the dating world again. Feel the pain you are must be experiencing after a divorce. Or live in denial instead and inflict yourself on the next woman you can convince you are over your divorce already.

A new wardrobe, a new hairstyle, a red convertible, or losing ten pounds aren’t going to work in terms of finding your next relationship. They are a mile wide and an inch deep and you will only look silly and desperate to savvy women.

Instead, take the time to heal by sitting quietly alone and ponder your failed relationship until you can feel the sadness. When the pain surfaces resist stuffing it back down and allow it to filter into your heart, after which it can work its way to your brain in the form of lessons learned.

My men’s group experienced 5 divorces in a scant few years. These are lessons I gleaned from real men’s pain. The men who took the time to heal moved on. Those who then remarried did so successfully. Those who rushed into their next relationship or marriage failed to a man.

Ken Solin

Authentic Men Don’t Wear Masks

Some truths about men in midlife seem absolute. Men don a mask each morning when they wake up. Its purpose is to keep the world at an emotional distance while warding off any discussions about emotional issues. Like looking through a two-way mirror or wearing silver lens sunglasses, no one can see into his soul.

In the process of losing his emotional identity he has constructed an impenetrable wall around his heart just in case the two-way mirror and silver lens sunglasses don’t work.

Remaining on his emotional desert is a choice since he can also choose to leave that desert and embrace those closest to him. At least that is the fantasy many women have regarding emotional intimacy with the men in their relationships.

Any woman over twenty has already learned that they aren’t going to have the feeling dialogue they want to have with men. Their level of frustration simply continues to grow while men persist in not growing emotionally, so by the time a relationship enters its second decade the dialogue has become watered down to boring banalities. While women haven’t lost their edge in the emotional dialogue arena, men can’t seem to develop theirs, preferring instead not to suit up for game that is going to be played on the uneven playing field that represents the man/woman emotional paradigm.

A 50% divorce rate plus more women choosing to remain single than marry looks like women have grown weary waiting for men to “grow up” emotionally.

I know many men who when we meet typically greet me with a lot of noise, backslapping, and bravado, all meant to feign camaraderie. The banter is light and pointless and never really engages either of us. When we say good-bye I immediately forget running into them and consider crossing the street the next time I see them coming. Their masks are always firmly in place and their dialogue is as captivating as the horoscope in the morning newspaper. When I consider the women in their lives I shudder thinking about how boring, impersonal, and irrelevant their conversations must be.

What’s in it for men to lose their masks and open up emotionally to talk with their partners in a manner that promotes relationship growth and intimacy? Most importantly, men finally can get what they want without feeling like they have to jump through hoops or rage angrily out of frustration. Men can have their needs met because women will appreciate that their dialogue is coming from a feeling place and not just their heads. Women respect that and will express their emotions without hesitation in return. This is what healthy relationships look like.

The safest place for men to learn to speak from their hearts is in small, confidential men’s groups where what is said remains in the room. Men can help each other learn this skill and encourage each other to expand their emotional vocabularies. While it might feel threatening to practice this with his partner, other men who suspend their judgment can provide just the safety a man requires to try out his emotional legs. In the 15 years I have been involved in working with men I have yet to meet a man who didn’t learn how to speak from his heart quickly. It’s time for men to level the field that relationships are played on and become authentic partners.

Ken Solin

Men Have the Emotional Skills of Boys

A relationship shouldn’t be a competitive arena. It should be the one place where a man and a woman can find refuge without fear.

For this to be possible both partners are required to be equally skilled at discussing their relationship in emotional terms, without which the relationship is doomed to fail. It’s generally men who are unable to hold up their end of the relationship because few can engage in a dialogue that features their feelings.

Men aren’t emotionally stupid, merely inexperienced. Men aren’t intentionally vague and evasive when women bring up the emotional aspect of their relationship; they simply never learned the requisite skills.

A discussion about sex might involve a man telling his partner that he doesn’t think they are having sex often enough. The woman replies that she isn’t feeling particularly sexual. Neither person feels heard since each is speaking a different language, his generated from his head and hers from her heart. He expresses what he thinks. She expresses what she feels. Thoughts are open to debate. Feelings are not.

With marriages failing at 50%, and more women now choosing to remain single than marry, something is terribly wrong. I have rarely met a woman who doesn’t feel frustrated and angry because so few men are capable of discussing their feelings in a relationship.

Men have been discouraged from accessing a feeling place since boyhood. A boy who is injured is told to “act like a man,” which is a euphemism for stuffing the pain. Boys become men who simply continue the process instilled in them.

Why should men be interested in learning how to talk about their feelings? They can finally get what they want without defaulting to pointless arguing or threatening. A man who can tell his partner that he is missing the sweet closeness he feels when they make love is going to fare better than the man who says he doesn’t think he is having enough sex. This isn’t a trick to have sex. Actually its application goes much further than that. A man who can express his feelings will be heard by a woman regarding every issue in their relationship because she will appreciate the emotional authenticity of what he says. She knows that his expressed feelings aren’t open for debate. Their dialogue will be vastly expanded and their relationship can grow on an equal footing.

Men can teach one another how to speak from their hearts and they are doing it already, albeit in small numbers. Men who meet in small groups with the expressed purpose of becoming better men learn how to speak from their emotional base. The small, confidential men’s group offers support without judgment. Men can hone their skills and engage women in emotional dialogue from which they had previously been shut out. It doesn’t take very long for a man to find his emotional voice.

It’s time for men to catch up with women. It’s time for men to get what they want without resorting to anger. It’s time for men to act more like men and less like boys.

Ken Solin

Unconditional Love-a Man’s View

Is unconditional love only found in romance novels or does it exist in real life? The fellows in my men’s group have been meeting for 15 years. For most, unconditional love means that a woman will overlook his faults, quirks, and habits and not make her love for him dependent on his changing them. This doesn’t mean that men should be unwilling to make some modifications in their behavior, though, because absolute inflexibility doesn’t serve a relationship either.

The characteristics a man exhibits during courtship are a good indicator of his future behavior, and if these qualities are deal-killers, a woman would be wise to skip this one. If she pursues the relationship in spite of her concerns, she will likely try to get him to change what she doesn’t like about him. A man craves to be loved for who he is and what he does, and if, instead, he’s attacked for those qualities and actions, he’ll feel betrayed and judged. This will prevent achieving true intimacy in the relationship because a man won’t feel he can trust his partner, and as a wise older man once told me, “Where there is no trust, there is no love.”

To expect a man to undergo a major personality or behavioral make-over is unrealistic and self-defeating. It’s called projection, and it never works because it’s based entirely on the fantasy of who someone is, and not the reality. If a man snored when a woman met him, she shouldn’t assume that he will undergo surgery to correct his snoring later on. If he has been playing basketball with the same friends every Saturday morning or riding a motorcycle for a decade, he will probably want to continue those activities, and she should not assume that he will stop just because she’s become involved with him and doesn’t appreciate his passion for these activities. In the very early stages of the relationship, she might indicate that these behaviors or activities are problematic for her and ask if he would consider modifying them. If he adamantly resists, she must either accept who he is or if that is too painful, admit that he’s probably not the man for her. For a man to discover that his partner overlooked his prominently displayed behavior with the hidden agenda of changing it later would be perceived as a betrayal that would be impossible to ignore.

Expecting some degree of change is completely reasonable, though. For instance, my wife sat me down the other day to discuss how she feels when I don’t take into account how my behavior affects her. The issue was my faulty memory regarding her schedule and activities and exhibiting what she felt was a less-than-thoughtful attitude. She didn’t ask me to change my behavior or say she would withhold her love if I didn’t. She merely asked me to be aware of how being treated casually that way instead of being considered affects her. This seemed to me to be more about my being conscious than anything else, and I promised to try to take her feelings into account. As I do, I’m sure my behavior will naturally become more thoughtful and respectful. I didn’t have to change who I am to satisfy her desire for emotional consideration and she didn’t withhold love to teach me a lesson. I merely had to be conscious of how my actions affect her emotionally.

Everything I have said applies equally to women. There’s no double standard where love is concerned. Both sexes need and deserve to be respected and loved for who they really are—not for who their partner wishes they were. Accepting each other’s basic qualities and the possibility for a minor amount of behavioral modification and compromise is the first step on the path to unconditional love. No relationship may ever fully attain it, but if the partners consciously pursue that goal, they’ll be on a solid path. Conversely, a relationship that fails to acknowledge unconditional love as a goal will likely fritter away its precious energy nit-picking and arguing endlessly.

Ken Solin

I feel, are two words that make men very anxious

It doesn’t surprise a woman when she notices that her partner breaks out in cold sweat when she asks him to express his feelings about a problem issue in their relationship. A Woman grasps early on that her relationship isn’t going to include much dialogue that emanates from her partner’s heart, and not his head, and whether she likes it or not, she realizes that their relationship issues will probably be forever stuck in first gear where they will grind away and resolve at a snail’s pace if at all.

A man likely expresses his sense of sexual frustration by stating that he doesn’t think he and his partner are being sexual enough. A woman responds that she just isn’t feeling sexual. This then becomes a circular argument that plays like a loop on U Tube, except it isn’t entertaining. No amount of conversation about a relationship issue can lead to any real resolution as long as men and women speak different languages, and I think versus I feel, are two entirely and distinctly different notions.

So how do men and women get on the same page so that they can engage in real dialogue about their relationship? Since it is primarily men who are lacking the necessary skills required to speak from their hearts, it is men who need to learn a new language. This isn’t a trick for men to get women to have sex, but instead is a behavior men can learn to get whatever it is they want and need, through clear communication.

Absent explaining what he is feeling to a woman a man’s requests are open to challenge and debate. Thoughts can be argued because they are opinions. Feelings cannot be challenged because they are intimately personal and not open to challenge. I don’t think we’re having enough sex can be debated, but I’m not feeling sexual can’t be.

A man who knows how to speak from his heart and who is feeling sexually frustrated can tell his partner that he is missing the warmth, connectedness, and closeness he feels when they make love. A woman wouldn’t likely ignore that heart-felt remark, and while it might no guaranty a sexual romp, at least she would truly understand what her partner is experiencing and feel more amenable to working with him to resolve it.  It puts a man and a woman on an even playing field in their relationship, probably for the first time.

This isn’t a trick however and shouldn’t be construed as one, because it isn’t about how to get women to have sex. It has far wider implications that go beyond just sex. A man who knows how to access his feelings and can enunciate them candidly can explain how he feels about every issue that arises in his relationship. His chances for making his point with a woman are greatly enhanced because she recognizes from where his point emanated.

Where do men go to school to learn this heart-based language? It is most easily and least painfully learned with other men who are struggling with the same problem. The reason men sweat the feeling conversation is that they are uncomfortably unskilled in it. Men can teach one another how to access this place in the confines of a men’s group whose only rule is confidentiality.

After 16 years working with men I know how quickly they can learn this new language. In as little as a few months men begin to feel comfortable talking about their feelings and the more adept they become the closer they move towards holding their own confidently in a relationship dialogue with their partner. It isn’t easy and men should expect the same difficulty they would encounter learning any new language. Becoming fluent in a language takes some time and practice, but the reward becomes obvious. Men have a far better chance to get what they want and need by explaining how they feel about it rather than what they think about it.

Ken Solin’s The Key to the Men’s Room: What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around will be available in September. It is an authentic look at men that women haven’t seen before. It is very much a reality show where men speak in their own voices about their issues, particularly relationship issues.