Relationship Advice

Relationship Advice for a Desperate Man: Do ALL Women Want Kids?

Many men find themselves frustrated with dating and understanding women…

This is compounded if he doesn’t want to have children because many men assume that ALL women want to have children. It even seems that many women use the topic of ‘kids’ in the early stages of the relationship to test how serious a man is about their relationship.

So if you’re a man, who does not want children, how are you supposed to have any chance at a long term relationship? As soon as you say “I don’t want children”, the friction begins and the relationship ends soon there after.

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

I often find myself in the situation that I have eventually met a girl who is emotionally available for a long-term loving relationship, which is exactly what I’m looking for, when she brings up the topic “marriage and kids” in the early stages of the relationship.

What I want is someone to share my life with but know very clearly that I do NOT want to have children. I appreciate that most women have a natural calling to give birth sooner or later in life and can’t argue with that. As a friend once put it: “You can’t deprive a woman of having children”.

It often feels as if the topic “kids” is used by women to check if a guy is really interested in a serious relationship. As I do not lie about important things like that, the whole issue becomes an obstacle at a very early point and the relationship never really develops.

My question is: What is the best way for me to approach this problem? Do I just have to accept that it is not a good idea, at all, to start a LT relationship with a girl, because she might, at some point, want to have children?

Thanks for all your useful advice! Always good to visit your website.
Gert

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hQcI2qumOA[/youtube]

Should You Avoid Long Term Relationships All Together?

If you’re still young, say less than 30, you may actually change your mind as you get older. So saying very adamantly, that you never, ever, want kids is not only harsh, but possibly untrue. How can you possibly know how you’ll feel in the next 5-10 years? You can’t!

If you are however, absolutely certain that you never, ever, want kids, then what is the best way to approach this problem with your new girlfriend?

Absolutes are never a good idea, not in life, and especially not in relationships. Rather than telling her “Never ever, no way in hell!”, try a more subtle and less offensive approach, like “At this point in my life I don’t believe that I want children”. Don’t lead her to believe that you’ll change your mind, but there’s no need to be so FIRM either.

After all, the only thing you can possibly know for sure is that you don’t want kids NOW, and you don’t want kids in the near future.

Do ALL Women Really Want Children?

You see, it’s not that all women ‘want’ children, but society teaches them form day one that they ‘should’ want children and there must be something wrong with them if they don’t. Hopefully that’s changing as we mature and evolve as a society…

There is a very good chance that you will meet a woman who also does not want children. There are fewer women who feel this way, but they are definitely out there. A woman typically doesn’t make this decision until she’s a little older and these women tend to be the more driven and career minded. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with her decision, and she’d be thrilled to know that she’s not the only person in the world who doesn’t want children.

There are also many women who, for one reason or another, are unable to have children. I’m not talking about the adoption crazed mommy wanna-be’s, but the women who have come to terms with their situation and are actually OK with it.

One other point that is important to remember is…not to get so stuck on the ‘long term’. Enjoy what you have today. It’s OK to share a few years with someone and then go your separate ways. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed if you don’t spend the rest of your lives together. As long as you both enjoy it, the time will never be wasted.

Live your life for this moment. The past is already gone and the future is only a dream. This moment is really the only thing that is certain.

Want More Sex? Here’s how…

By melody

Regardless of what you may think. Sex happens in the brain. Our ability to feel desire, the things that turn us on, the things that make us reach climax all happen in the brain. So, if you want more sex, it’s reasonable to assume you should know more about the brain. I’ll give you the primer version.

Our brains are hard wired to respond to perceived threat in ways that will preserve our ability to survive. These automatic reactions are called “Survival mechanisms”. Our brain fires off chemicals that provoke us into feelings of fear for our survival. Then we have biologically programmed ways to react to fear that aid us in surviving whatever it is that is threatening our survival. You don’t really have a choice about what you are feeling when you perceive yourself to be in a threatening situation. Your brain takes over. Our brains are very powerful in affecting how we feel and how we respond.

You see our brains have been programmed through biology and culture to respond in ways that will insure our survival in primitive situations. Your brain doesn’t really get it that if you perceive your job is being threatened you will not die. It really feels like you will. Your brain doesn’t know that if your husband/wife/partner is angry with you and you think they might leave you that you won’t die. Your brain doesn’t know that when a friend calls your character into question, that you won’t die. Your brain doesn’t discriminate between actual threat for your survival and emotional threat.

Our brains are divided into sections. As we evolved as a species we went from depending on simple functions to the very complex brain that we now have as human beings. Our reptilian ancestors brains comprised of three cleanly defined sections: the front part allows for smell, the middle for vision, and the rear allows us balance and coordination. And those basic survival instincts were cordoned off in a space between the smell and vision sections, a kind of command post with the scientific name of “diencephalon”. This part of the brain holds our drives for food, our “fight-or-flight” aggression reactions, and of course, sex.

Our brains further evolved into what is known as the “mammalian” brain when our left and right cerebral hemispheres developed. More and more circuits had to be added to process the more complex functions of the life and culture of our mammalian ancestors and our brains grew in size. But we still rely on that command post to assist us in our primary need: survival. This relic of the past fights our evolved brains more flexible reactions and tends to take over when we perceive that we need them.

This very powerful tiny walnut sized part of our brain, set inside our brain stem, is called our “hypothalamus”. It injects our system with electrical stimulus evoking anger, anxiety and acute fear. Most of the time, we are able to maintain mastery over this part of our brain. But now and again our animal senses tell us that our survival or our well-being is being challenged and that package of survival programs, called “emotions” erupt.

It’s like you have two brains in one body. Your emotional states that evolved to help you survive; and the other which is ruled by reason. The old brain; and the new brain in one package: your skull.

Okay, now, back to sex…

When we feel emotional threat, we respond with this primitive part of our brain. We feel scared, and our defenses go on autopilot. We feel angry and protective and either withdraw or go into attack mode to regain a sense of control. While it is possible to feel a need to have sex from this place, it’s more of a desire for dominance than it is the kind of intimacy that we most need and want.

Women tend to be turned off by men who display the need for this type of sexual encounter, if they aren’t it’s because they have never experienced the other kind. And even if they will put up with it for a while, eventually they will stop wanting to participate because it just doesn’t feel good. It feels scary and unsafe.

Safety is what leads to continued, warm intimate and frequent sex. When we feel safe with our partner our brains kick into a mode that allows us to drop our boundaries and allow ourselves to feel the vulnerability we need to feel in order to experience deep sexual intimacy. Being afraid triggers the old brain into survival mode and sets up firm boundaries that keep distance between us. ant More Sex

So, if you want more sex, work toward more emotional safety in your relationship. Emotional safety is accomplished by awareness of and sensitivity to what our partner is feeling. It means being aware that when our partner feels threatened and is yelling or acting angry toward us, we listen to what is underneath their angry behavior. We ask them for more information about what may have hurt them and own up to our part in whatever occurred. This doesn’t mean passively letting them have their way, it means sharing about what we honestly feel and negotiating a result that works for both of you.

Our old brain is tricky. It can make us think that something is threatening when it’s not. It can make us think we are being attacked when we are not. Being sensitive to what may trigger our partner into feeling they are being attacked helps us be more aware of what might be standing in the way of more intimacy (i.e. more sex).

Who Are You And What Have You Done With My Partner?

By melody

When I got married I was such a happy person. My husband was gentle, kind, giving, and such a great dad. It came as a complete shock to me the first time he got angry with me.

You see, I am an anger phobic from way back. I will never forget cringing as my grandmother screamed at my mentally retarded uncle. She would go on tirades that filled the house with angry blasts of her voice (this was no small task as the house was a 3 story boarding house). I was never comfortable with anger (especially not my own!) and I would do just about anything to avoid it. Additionally, when anyone was angry I had huge judgments regarding them. Anger, in my opinion meant ugliness, abusiveness and there just wasn’t any excuse for it.

So marrying someone human enough to get angry startled me. I didn’t understand where my loving, gentle husband had disappeared to and who was this person in my bedroom anyway? After all, I didn’t see that I could possible have done anything to have brought on his wrath. I never did anything to deliberately hurt anyone, especially him, my most beloved. The anger that I felt as a response separated us. I felt totally disconnected from him. I couldn’t understand where he got off being so angry with me for nothing I could comprehend. Who was this angry monster and why did he seem to hate me?

That’s how it felt to me. If someone was that angry with you they had to hate you, right? Consciously I knew that was wrong, but it definitely felt that way. The little kid inside cringed at every angry word he spoke.

I was fearful of his getting angry so I started editing what I told him. In other words, controlling him by not giving him all the information. That always backfired of course, because eventually he would discover what I had not told him and it would make him even angrier.

I don’t recall how long it took for me to realize that underneath the raging exterior of my formerly loving partner was a lot of fear and hurt. What’s more, what he was angry about was never really about what I thought it was about, it wasn’t really about what I had said or done, it was about something far bigger, and older.

His anger was what I call a “Self-Protective” stance that he took to manage his hurt and fear. Often when someone is hurt they will become larger than life. They will raise their voice, puff up their physical self to maximum capacity and try to look as threatening as possible in an effort to appear more powerful than they feel (Imagine a puffer fish here). They appear large and loud and scary so that you will be intimidated into stopping whatever it is you are doing that is hurting or scaring them. Underneath there is a kind of desperation and terror. But that is not what they show; they show an overpowering, larger than life toughness to attempt to force change.

The person that had been so frightening to me was in fact scared and hurt. Now, for some of you that might not be new information, but for me it was a huge newsflash. Knowing this changed everything. It empowered me to respond differently than I ever had to an angry person.

Instead of responding as a helpless victim and cringing, trying to control them by placating them with platitudes, running around trying to fix the problem that upset them, or worse, reacting with anger in return – I learned to give them empathy. All of the old ways of responding, I discovered, created more resentment and anger.

Empathy, I was thrilled to realize, created a whole new kind of relationship and helped me find my kind, gentle husband again. He had always been there, inside the attitude that had scared me so badly. His Self-Protector stance had left me fearful and confused. But once I figured out that I could change everything by changing how I viewed his anger, our relationship was transformed.

Our anger is a survival mechanism that kicks in when we are threatened in some way. It throws us into a Self-Protector position in order to keep ourselves alive. Now, in most cases in today’s world, we are not really going to die, but on a brain level, that’s how it feels. If our partner responds to our hurt and fear with empathy for our feelings, then we can slowly let go of our need for our Self-Protective reactivity and let ourselves be vulnerable again.

The next time your partner is angry with you. Stop. Don’t do what you always have done. This time, notice the hurt or fear and say something to indicate that you noticed they are hurting, like “I’m sorry, I can see there is something I did that hurt you. Can you tell me what’s going on?” or something similar in your own words. Give her some indication that you understand she is hurting. Let him know that you care that he is hurt. Odds are you will find out that the upset wasn’t really about you, but about something from your partner’s history. So be open, be curious and empathetic. This will allow their anger to bring you closer instead of pushing you further apart.

Marriage – Just a Legal Contract or a Real Commitment?

By loveandsex

What is the meaning of marriage today?

We believe that marriage today is little more than a piece of paper these days – BUT not for the reasons that you may think.

Our frustration lies in the fact that many people seem to treat the contract of marriage like the contract on their car. They lock in the interest rate, buy the car, and then rarely even bother to change the oil or wash the car…

Corporations give certain privileges to people who hold this piece of paper (only the one sanctioned by the government) while refusing to acknowledge or accept other definitions, perfectly valid definitions, of marriage.

Getting married shouldn’t be like petitioning to get a local building permit, getting a government inspector to sign off that your plans are up to his specific codes.

The separation of church and state no longer seems to exist – making marriage more of a political statement than a real commitment!

Here’s a great article that we found on Netscape today that explains the subtle yet very important differences between a contract and true commitment:

"Till death do us part, contract or covenant?"

And on the topic of separation of church and state (or rather the sad lack thereof), check out these recent articles:

Then leave a comment below and tell us where YOU stand on this very controversial issue!

Can You Trust Your Partner to Be JUST Friends with a Previous Lover?

By loveandsex

So your partner claims to be just friends with a previous lover…

Fact is, it’s only natural to continue to have feelings for your ex even after the break up. But what happens when your partner remains good friends with their ex? Is it possible for them to be ‘just’ friends or will they be prone to ‘slippage’?

Is this really possible? Should you trust them?

We feel that love is not finite and that it’s very possible to love many different people for different reasons. We love our children, our parents, our friends, and our pets. We love them all dearly, but in slightly different ways.

So, yes. We do think it’s possible for your partner to remain friends with their ex girlfriend, boyfriend, or spouse. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as there are no secrets about the relationship. Your partner should be completely open and honest with you about their feelings and where they stand.

How can you address the jealousy monster?

Even with full disclosure, there’s bound to be some jealousy from either their previous partner or from you. In today’s society, many treat their partners like they own them, telling them who they can talk to, where they can go, and when… The best way to combat the jealousy monster in this situation is open and honest communication and lots and lots of reassurance.

What if you suspect that there’s more than friendship going on?

So you’ve been completely flexible and trusting, but you have this nagging feeling that there’s more to this friendship than meets the eye?

If you believe that your partner is playing the friend card to hide an affair, you should trust your instincts. Trust but verify. If your partner is hiding things or seeing an ex behind your back, that’s a problem.

Try talking to them in a non-confrontational manner. They may just be afraid of your reaction. But if talking doesn’t work, it’s time to realize that they may be more than friends. At that point, you’ll have to make some hard decisions about your relationship.

Here’s a question from Olivia who’s in this exact situation.

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

I have been with my boyfriend about 2 years. We both are deeply in love. He is kind of guy who knows how to love women and make her happy. He is also very kind, friendly and loyal.

The problem is he had a relationship with his ex for about 7 years, where they lived together. Now she moved in other country, but she often asks him for help. He always does it for her. At the beginning I never cared, because the way he behaves shows me that he is really in love with me.

But recently I found out that he sends his ex her favorite magazine via E-Mail weekly. He scans the article and sends it to her. Now I am really doubting if he really get over his ex… And I don’t know if it is appropriate to ask him again if he didn’t get over her 100%, to which I guess he would say definitely no. I really need your opinion! I only worried that he is too nice to say no to women.

— Olivia (Germany)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC1FsAiEUd4[/youtube]