When Talking Doesn't Help 
 

If you were to say to the man in your life, "Honey, we need to talk about our relationship," what do you think would happen?
 
If he would answer with something like, "I thought you'd never ask!" or, "I've been dying to share my feelings about our life together, and I especially want to hear how you feel about us and how you want me to change," you are luckier than the vast majority of couples.
 
Most women would expect that their men would get distracted, defensive, irritated, fidgety, roll their eyes, or shut down completely, and most men would feel like they're being punished for a crime they didn't commit. She knows her lines, he knows his, and it always ends up worse than it started. No wonder the five words a man dreads most are, "Honey, we need to talk."
 
It turns out that men are right; talking about your relationship is more likely to make it worse than better. Talking about emotions calms women because they get a shot of oxytocin, the bonding chemical, even from negative interaction.
 
Men don't want to talk because talking won't make them feel better. In fact, it will make them feel worse - their bodies get pumped with unpleasant-feeling cortisol in conflictive, emotional talk.
 
Men experience more physiological arousal with more blood flow to their muscles than women when they have negative emotions. It is physically uncomfortable for them to talk, especially when they feel shame, and they are likely to feel shame when you approach them with anxiety or unhappiness.    
 
It's the same type of dynamic that seizes both of you when you startle at something on the road while he's driving. He sees your fear as an assault on his driving ability and he either puts a chilly wall between you or becomes an angry Ben Hur to show you how aggressively he can drive.
 
What happens in both these situations is a primal dynamic that is present in all social animals: Your fear stimulates his shame and/or aggression.
 
Often punished at an early age for showing vulnerable emotions (Big boys don't cry!"), males tend to merge shame and aggression. To avoid the exceeding pain of shame, they become aggressive. That is why "Death before dishonor" is not a phrase associated with women's groups.
 
We are also unlikely to hear the phrase, "No woman is an island." For a woman, worse than feeling bad is having no one care that she feels bad. When women talk to each other, they often make connection by exposing vulnerability. If she tells her girlfriend, "I feel sad, lonely, ignored, etc,", she hears your complaint as an invitation to move closer and lets you know that she cares. So why can't your husband do it like your girlfriends? 
 
Confronted with unhappiness from the woman in his life he feels like he's failing. By adulthood, normal male socialization has funneled the shame-aggression response into a dread of failure, particularly as a provider, protector, lover, and parent. He feels too inadequate to be able to recognize her desire for connection that lies beneath her complaints.
 
Fortunately, we do have powerful internal signals of the fear-shame dynamic. If a woman feels anxious and her man isn't helping, then it's likely that he's actually feeling shame and she needs to make a compassionate connection with him.
 
If a man is feeling hassled or trapped and his woman is making it worse, he can bet that she's feeling fear of isolation or deprivation; he needs to get in touch with how much he cares for her and reassure her. 
 
The discomfort they both feel is not something that one is doing to the other. Rather, it is happening to both of them, and together and they can disarm it.
 
Mutually disarming the fear-shame dynamic is the most effective way to achieve the closeness you both want, which is, at heart, a love beyond words.  
 
Steven Stosny
CompassionPower.Com

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