PAX~World News Craves Attention For Valentine's Day

[ubaru]

PAX~World News Craves Attention For Valentine's Day

Dear Reader,

For years, I thought that I needed so much attention that if I depended upon one man for it, he wouldn't have time for a job! (Is that why Greg is retired?) But I beat myself up for being needy, immature, silly, etcetera. Then I found out why women get so anxious without enough attention. It's because without attention a woman cannot create the connection she needs to FEEL SAFE.

Why is that important? Because everything wonderful and lovely about women does not happen until they feel safe. Up until then, you're going to get bitchy, whiney and mean. After women feel safe, their kindness, patience, generosity, compassion (I could go on and on) occurs naturally and effortlessly.

When a woman is complaining to her husband or boyfriend about not getting enough attention, she's really saying that she can't get that connection she craves at the primal level. When she complains, "You're not interested in me or my life," she saying the same thing. If you pay me attention, we can connect. If you're interested in me, we can connect. If we can connect, I can breathe because I'm safe.

I'm conveying this to you because many men and women think, like I once did, that our need for attention is trivial. Big mistake, huge cost. So, please, take that extra minute to pay attention, to be interested, to make eye contact, to ask a sweet, simple question and listen for the answer. It's a worthwhile investment.

And it could be the most important thing you provide on Valentine's Day. Certainly more efficient than that dinner, present, chocolates and a card that just gets you, unfortunately, to zero!

And while we're at it, Trust and Respect are as important to the masculine as Attention and Interest are to the feminine. They are the beginning of bringing out the best in men, and from women in man-mode. Why? Because they create the greatest access to PRODUCING RESULTS, which equals safety to the masculine.

Back to Valentine's Day...what if, instead of demanding symbols of love, we all asked for a special dose of attention, and provided respect for how darn inconvenient this day on the calendar is?

In partnership for your best self,
Alison Armstrong
PAX Programs
www.understandmen.com

[pbrinton]

I don't understand the separation between the needs of men and the needs of women. I would say that everyone is entitled to all four of these virtues. Interest, attention, respect and trust are all essential ingredients, or should be, in our dealings with all people, most especially those we are close to. I believe that we are all some combination of male and female, whatever our physical form (and our physical forms span the full spectrum, including an area of ambiguity in the middle). Our male aspects and our female aspects both need nurturing. How long are we to subscribe to the "man's role/woman's role" dichotomy and ignore the richness of a relationship based on the whole person rather than some vision of how someone of a particular gender is expected to behave?

Patrick Brinton

PAX~World News Craves Attention For Valentine's Day

Dear Reader,

For years, I thought that I needed so much attention that if I depended upon one man for it, he wouldn't have time for a job! (Is that why Greg is retired?) But I beat myself up for being needy, immature, silly, etcetera. Then I found out why women get so anxious without enough attention. It's because without attention a woman cannot create the connection she needs to FEEL SAFE.

Why is that important? Because everything wonderful and lovely about women does not happen until they feel safe. Up until then, you're going to get bitchy, whiney and mean. After women feel safe, their kindness, patience, generosity, compassion (I could go on and on) occurs naturally and effortlessly.

When a woman is complaining to her husband or boyfriend about not getting enough attention, she's really saying that she can't get that connection she craves at the primal level. When she complains, "You're not interested in me or my life," she saying the same thing. If you pay me attention, we can connect. If you're interested in me, we can connect. If we can connect, I can breathe because I'm safe.

I'm conveying this to you because many men and women think, like I once did, that our need for attention is trivial. Big mistake, huge cost. So, please, take that extra minute to pay attention, to be interested, to make eye contact, to ask a sweet, simple question and listen for the answer. It's a worthwhile investment.

And it could be the most important thing you provide on Valentine's Day. Certainly more efficient than that dinner, present, chocolates and a card that just gets you, unfortunately, to zero!

And while we're at it, Trust and Respect are as important to the masculine as Attention and Interest are to the feminine. They are the beginning of bringing out the best in men, and from women in man-mode. Why? Because they create the greatest access to PRODUCING RESULTS, which equals safety to the masculine.

Back to Valentine's Day...what if, instead of demanding symbols of love, we all asked for a special dose of attention, and provided respect for how darn inconvenient this day on the calendar is?

In partnership for your best self,
Alison Armstrong
PAX Programs
www.understandmen.com

[ubaru]

I don't understand the separation between the needs of men and the needs of women. I would say that everyone is entitled to all four of these virtues. Interest, attention, respect and trust are all essential ingredients, or should be, in our dealings with all people, most especially those we are close to. I believe that we are all some combination of male and female, whatever our physical form (and our physical forms span the full spectrum, including an area of ambiguity in the middle). Our male aspects and our female aspects both need nurturing. How long are we to subscribe to the "man's role/woman's role" dichotomy and ignore the richness of a relationship based on the whole person rather than some vision of how someone of a particular gender is expected to behave?

Patrick Brinton

Totally true, Patrick. Alison is referring to the masculine and feminine in all of us. Most of us have both in varying degrees. But this is not about how we are expected to behave. It's how we DO behave! Alison's genius is in teaching us about our instinctual differences which are hardwired VERY strongly in us and have a lot to do with our hormonal differences. Your thinking, actions, and communication are different than mine because your brain was bathed in a huge amount of testosterone in the womb and mine in predominantly estrogen and progesterone. It's amazing to discover what these instinctual differences are and how they play out in our relationships.

In the video below she talks about the distinction between human spirit and human animal. In understanding how the human animal works we can make choices from our human spirit to support each other in relating better together.

I'll give you an example: Men actually see more acutely (hunter vision) than women do which is how they can see spaces in between cars on the highway that they can fit in that women can't see. Women have more peripheral vision (gatherer vision) than men so when we're in the passenger seat and you are changing lanes frequently, we keep thinking we're going to get hit from our side which can make us really tense. But if we know this difference we can have a victory of the human spirit and decide to trust you more when you change lanes. Or you can decide you'd like us to be able to relax, maybe take a nap, and so you choose to let go of your single focus of getting us there in the most efficient way, and instead get behind the trucks in the slow lane and just cruise nice and easy for us.

Listening to Alison's material you discover hundreds of fascinating ways that we are really different, actually. It's biological. And how to bring out our best, instead of our worst, using this knowledge.

Viva la difference!

[CSummer]

Ms Armstrong wrote:

"I'm conveying this to you because many men and women think, like I once did, that our need for attention is trivial. Big mistake, huge cost."

Yes, a willingness to be present with each other - offering each other caring, supportive attention - as much as is needed and feasible is crucial to what I think of as a conscious relationship.

". . . everything wonderful and lovely about women does not happen until they feel safe. Up until then, you're going to get bitchy, whiney and mean. After women feel safe, their kindness, patience, generosity, compassion (I could go on and on) occurs naturally and effortlessly."

I think it was Gay Hendrix who said that relationships are most likely to work well when both partners take 100% responsibility for how they are. It seems to me that if a woman is being bitchy, whiney and mean, she is coming from powerlessness, not conscious of her true needs and of how she is creating her experience within the relationship (by the kind of emotional atmosphere her attitude fosters). If she is tuned in to what she's needing and feeling, she has two options: To offer what she needs and to ask for what she wants from her partner. If her partner doesn't respond by supporting her in getting her needs met (e.g., by being fully present with her), it may be that the partner is not someone with whom she can form a truly caring, mutually supportive relationship.

My sense is that we all have essentially the same needs, but for each of us, the particular need that is up and how it manifests varies a lot. It may well be that attention-to-feel-safe is a need manifestation that women feel much more often than men. I wonder though how much this is cultural, as I know that men can also have huge safety needs. The difference may be how in-touch we are with our needs and what seem like acceptable ways to express them (or if it's even okay for us to acknowledge them within ourselves). We also have needs for acceptance, so we may do a lot of self-censoring that precludes open and honest expression of needs.

Offering presence that is genuinely caring and supportive is central to building a conscious relationship. Such presence enhances our self-attention, which can enable the expansion of self-awareness, acceptance, understanding and compassion.

CSummer

[Sara S]

Hi, Clint!

You say: " I wonder though how much this is cultural..." and I know a lot of it is cultural. I've never been sensible enough to be afraid of anything, and I think this is due to a few different influences:

-I had a bully for an older brother, and he would haul me along on "adventures" from the time I could walk (which sometimes led to searches involving a bunch of the people in the small town where we lived); these were usually dangerous. He also used to try to frighten me by brandishing "scary" stuff at me; after a while of this, I figured out that if I didn't act afraid, he'd quit. And after another while, the "act" became the reality.

- My father wasn't afraid of anything (just two examples: he quit college to be a test pilot in France in WWI; rode a motorcycle from Texas to California in the '20s (when the "road" through the Arizona sand dunes was wired-together planks on the sand)); and he became my major role model, I think.



Sara

Ms Armstrong wrote:

"I'm conveying this to you because many men and women think, like I once did, that our need for attention is trivial. Big mistake, huge cost."

Yes, a willingness to be present with each other - offering each other caring, supportive attention - as much as is needed and feasible is crucial to what I think of as a conscious relationship.

". . . everything wonderful and lovely about women does not happen until they feel safe. Up until then, you're going to get bitchy, whiney and mean. After women feel safe, their kindness, patience, generosity, compassion (I could go on and on) occurs naturally and effortlessly."

I think it was Gay Hendrix who said that relationships are most likely to work well when both partners take 100% responsibility for how they are. It seems to me that if a woman is being bitchy, whiney and mean, she is coming from powerlessness, not conscious of her true needs and of how she is creating her experience within the relationship (by the kind of emotional atmosphere her attitude fosters). If she is tuned in to what she's needing and feeling, she has two options: To offer what she needs and to ask for what she wants from her partner. If her partner doesn't respond by supporting her in getting her needs met (e.g., by being fully present with her), it may be that the partner is not someone with whom she can form a truly caring, mutually supportive relationship.

My sense is that we all have essentially the same needs, but for each of us, the particular need that is up and how it manifests varies a lot. It may well be that attention-to-feel-safe is a need manifestation that women feel much more often than men. I wonder though how much this is cultural, as I know that men can also have huge safety needs. The difference may be how in-touch we are with our needs and what seem like acceptable ways to express them (or if it's even okay for us to acknowledge them within ourselves). We also have needs for acceptance, so we may do a lot of self-censoring that precludes open and honest expression of needs.

Offering presence that is genuinely caring and supportive is central to building a conscious relationship. Such presence enhances our self-attention, which can enable the expansion of self-awareness, acceptance, understanding and compassion.

CSummer

[CSummer]

Thanks much for sharing this piece of your story, Sara. I always wonder about the kinds of growing-up experiences others (and I) had and how that might have contributed to our being the way we are.

It seems very true that if feeling a certain way doesn't seem useful - doesn't help our situation at all - we may stop feeling that way. When I was in elementary and high school, I would get stomach aches and would be allowed to stay home from school. In navy boot camp, I got stomach aches, and all I got for it was to suffer as I stood in formation. Eventually, I stopped having them.

Knowing how I've discovered some of my own feelings and needs buried under layers of beliefs and stories, it sometimes seems more accurate to say I'm not aware of having certain ones.

CSummer

Hi, Clint!

You say: " I wonder though how much this is cultural..." and I know a lot of it is cultural. I've never been sensible enough to be afraid of anything, and I think this is due to a few different influences:

-I had a bully for an older brother, and he would haul me along on "adventures" from the time I could walk (which sometimes led to searches involving a bunch of the people in the small town where we lived); these were usually dangerous. He also used to try to frighten me by brandishing "scary" stuff at me; after a while of this, I figured out that if I didn't act afraid, he'd quit. And after another while, the "act" became the reality.

- My father wasn't afraid of anything (just two examples: he quit college to be a test pilot in France in WWI; rode a motorcycle from Texas to California in the '20s (when the "road" through the Arizona sand dunes was wired-together planks on the sand)); and he became my major role model, I think.



Sara