There may be many men who look at this and think that women definitely do not want men to be open and honest. At the same time, there are many women who crave openess from their husbands, boyfriends, fathers and even sons. Resolving this conflict is as simple as exploring what is and is not meant by the traditionally feminine need for openess and honesty. Once we understand more of what it is and what it is not, the need becomes clear. While this is often considered a woman’s need, men also have this need, though not always at the same level.
WHAT OPENNESS AND HONESTY ARE NOT
First, openess and honesty do not bestow a carte blanche right to say anything you feel. It doesn’t mean you hurl insults to tell your wife she’s fat or talk about old mistakes all in the name of being “open and honest.” Being open and honest does not mean you are cruel, inconsiderate or insensitive. There are many people who will do and say such things, but interestingly enough, when others are “open and honest” with them, they don’t like it. The Golden Rule is always in force.
Second, openess and honesty is not losing one’s temper, shouting, or any other destructive or frightening display of emotion in the name of sharing one’s true feelings. Being open and honest does not mean you can cut loose with your harmful emotions. Just because you’re angry or hurting does not give you the right to hurt others in the name of sharing your feelings.
Third, openess and honesty is not telling someone what you’re really thinking at a particular moment if it will be hurtful. Don’t spoil a romantic moment with an unromantic truth. No one wants a wonderful mood spoiled.
This one has a story told to me by a law professor. One day, when he was a law student, he and his wife were at the beach during a gorgeous sunset. The waves were gently rolling in, the early evening breeze was just cooling, and just out to sea a sail boat made its way gently past a pier. His wife gazed lovingly up at his face, noting a look of far off thought in his eyes, and she asked, in that most romantic of voices, “What are you thinking?”
“I was wondering... if that sail boat hit the pier and one of those people fell off and got hurt, who would be liable? Would it be the pier for not having a railing high enough, or the boat for hitting it?”
He was going to continue his exploration, but his wife told him to shut up. He said he learned a valuable lesson that day. Don’t be lawyer with your spouse unless you want to be single again. Just because something is true, it really was what he was thinking, doesn’t mean that is what the question means. She wasn’t looking for what he was actually thinking, she was looking for something that would enhance the romance. The context of the question should have told him that the question wasn’t asking about the question.
To get the point across to a man more clearly, imagine a sexual situation in which a husband and wife have been flirting all evening. Then, as they were preparing for bed, he leans amorously toward her and whispers in his most suggestive voice “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” If she responded with what might be true, but it spoiled the mood, would that be appreciated? “I am if you’re thinking about the two loads of laundry I need to do tomorrow before I take the kids to their soccer game.”
A lesson I learned a long time ago is that when women ask questions, the question does not mean what the words mean, it often means “do you love me?” Consider this scenario. A woman, eight and a half months pregnant, has been having a moody day and made mistakes and her husband finds her crying with mascara running down her face and she looks up at her husband with puffy eyes and says “Do you think I look like a fat cow?”
Suppose the truest answer is “yes, actually, you do look like a fat cow, but I love you anyway.” Is that the answer she needs to hear? Do the words of her question reflect the actual question to which she seeks a factual answer, or is she really asking “Do you love me?” More completely, the question would be “Even though I look hideous with puffy eyes and mascara running down my face and I look like I swallowed a watermelon and my legs are swollen and I’ve messed up ten things today and I’m moody and crying all over the place... do you still love me?”
What sort of answer would say “Yes, I love you!” Is it the harsh truth in response to the actual words of the question she asked, or would it be words to the effect of “I always think you’re beautiful! I love you, honey.” Then focus on half a dozen or more beautiful things about her. Focus on her beautiful hands, her neck, her ear, anything you can find. Look for it, and be as truthful as possible since an outright lie won’t necessarily create the desired effect.
If you think she might need her “fat” issue addressed, you can remind her that you see the size of her belly as a sign of your love together, the life that she is bringing into this world that will forever be a part of you both. Gently touching her stomach, you could say something about looking forward to holding your baby in your arms and loving him or her as much as you love your wife. Saying “I love you, too!” to the baby can drive the point home.
WHAT OPENESS AND HONESTY ARE
Openess and honesty have to with letting your wife or your girlfriend into your world. They have to do with letting her know what’s going on and how you feel about it. Women often bond on an emotional level with other women not because they have factual information about something that’s happening, but because they talk about how they feel about what’s going on. With nothing but facts, or worse, with no facts at all, women feel shut out. They feel as though they can’t be trusted. They feel like he doesn’t want her close.
This applies for good times and bad. If there is some great news, she wants to be told, and being told first would be best. If he just got a promotion, she’d like a phone call to let her know before anyone else. If the big deal he’s been hoping to put togther is coming through, she wants to know. She wants to be the shoulder he can cry on, and she wants to be the person at his side in times of joy and celebration.
Honesty includes being up front about where things stand. If a problem has been brewing for some time and could explode at any moment, no woman wants to find out that she was kept in the dark. If he gets fired, and when he goes home that day he tells his wife, “This has been out there for six months, and the last shoe finally dropped. The plant is closing, honey, and I’m out of a job.” She will feel as though every time she asked how things were going and he said “fine” that he lied to her.
Openess means she gets into his life, and she knows how he feels about it. Honestly means she can trust what he says. When he says things are going well, she can trust that things really are going well. When there’s a problem, she knows that he’ll talk about it. When he’s hurting, she knows that he will lean on her. When he says something, she knows that it’s true as far as he knows.
CLOSING HIM UP
By opening up a little and telling her something about the problem and how annoying it all is, it makes her feel included. There might be nothing she can do but listen, but she can do that, and it lets her be there to love you and support you and be on your side. The challenge with men is that they tend not to open up if they think they can handle something themselves. They tend to not open up if they aren’t sure they can control their feelings. They tend not to open up if they aren’t sure they have an answer. Talking about a problem when he does not know what to do is very difficult for most men.
Worst of all, men and women won’t open up if they think they might be attacked for it. If they think that the response they will get is anything like “Oh, you shouldn’t be upset about that!” or “Why don’t you just quit?” or advice, especially from someone who doesn’t fully understand the situation and the costs of a particular action. Also, if they think that what they reveal might be used against them in a future argument, they won’t say anything. If they did something stupid and it made a mess, or if they took a risk and it didn’t pan out, and they think in the future an argument might include “Remember when you did that thing and almost destroyed your whole career? We should do this MY way!”
A man or woman must feel safe before opening up about hurts, or even loves, dreams and hopes for the future. Fear will keep them closed. Being hurt in the past breeds this fear, or any action that would indicate that the revealed information could be used against him. Even without past hurt, just the suspicion, just the possibility, will often keep men closed off. Men are taught to be self reliant, and they don’t like to admit weakness or defeat. An assurance followed through on can go far - “I am always on your side.”
Openess is being vulnerable. Being vulnerable is scary, for men especially. Men are taught to armor up, to hide their feelings and do what they are supposed to do no matter how they feel. Admitting to feelings of weakness or uncertainty sometimes makes them feel less masculine. Letting someone in, even a wife, can be extremely difficult for some men. If they’ve ever been hurt by you, then they are not likely to set aside their armor and give you a free shot at their vulnerable heart.
Openess is earned slowly over time by being completely trustworthy. Some people don’t have a problem being open. I happen to be one of those, at least with my wife and a tiny, tiny group of intimate friends. However, the volume of things I conceal from the world around me sometimes amazes me - even people who purport to care. The reason is that I’ve frequently been hurt and attacked by people who said all the right things, so it takes time before I’ll let people in on the most secret feelings in my heart.
WOMAN “FINE” AND MAN “FINE”
One of the great frustrations of men is when something is clearly wrong and a woman says “nothing, I’m fine.” To a man, that sounds like “something is wrong, it’s your fault, and I hate you. Go away!” From a woman, it more often means “something is wrong, and how hard you try to drag it out of me will tell me how much you really care.”
One of the great frustrations of women is when something is clearly wrong and a man says “nothing, I’m fine.” To a woman, that sounds like “something is wrong, and if you loved me, you’d try to drag it out of me.” From a man, it more often means “nothing’s wrong that I can’t handle.”
What often happens is a man will say “I’m fine” to a woman, and she’ll keep pressing for more answers, for an admission that there is a problem, and she’ll try to get him to talk about it - a common female strategy for dealing with a problem. To a man, it often feels like she’s saying “you’re too weak to handle this on your own. You need to open up to me and show me how weak you are. Open up and admit you can’t handle this!”
Then he gets upset that she’s prying, or shouts why she can’t just leave him alone. She feels like he just rejected her love. What he rejected was her demand for an admission of weakness. They both go away hurt. He’s hurt because she thinks he’s weak and has no respect for his ability to handle a problem. She’s hurt because she thinks that he doesn’t care that she loves him and wants her out of his life.
In the other direction, men often just let it go. They assume that if she said she’s fine, then whatever it is, she’ll just handle it herself. Because this strategy often makes her more upset, it only convinces him all the more that anytime she’s upset, it’s his fault. After a while, he doesn’t even want to be around her anymore and might avoid her altogether. Men start to think that anytime she’s upset, it’s time to hide because whether or not he says something or does something, he’ll be in trouble. It’s easier to go away, emotionally at least, maybe physically.
When dealing with women obviously having a hard time, my wife in particular, I will ask if she’s doing okay. If her response is “I’m fine,” I’ll let her know that I care and I’m willing to listen if she wants to talk. With most women, that’s enough. They don’t expect me to tough it out to show my love because we’re friends or I’m a son. With my wife, I wouldn’t stop there. I would make three meaningful attempts to find out what’s wrong. On the third one, I’d finish with something like “If you want to talk, I love you and I’ll be happy to listen or help you or anything you want. If you’d really rather not talk about it right now, I’ll be happy to talk about it later. Just let me know.”
If she wants to talk now, she’ll usually talk. Often, with my wife in particular, she knows that male and female “I’m fine” strategies are different so she won’t even say a single “nothing’s wrong, I’m fine.” She’ll tell me straight out whether or not she wants to talk. There might have been one, perhaps two times I had to go to three attempts. Often, she doesn’t want to talk because she’s having the internal dialog that she would have with me if I were talking to her. She’s working her way around and through the feelings so she can come out the other side and love me. She is one of the rare wonders with the skill to do this, a skill won through practice.
If my wife is dealing with me and she can tell that something is wrong, she knows that “I’m fine” means “I’ve got it.” I don’t say that nothing is wrong when it is, but “I’m fine” still means I can do this and I don’t need any help. She’ll usually just let me handle it from there since she knows I will talk to her if I need to bounce some ideas off of her. Since she is so insightful and supportive, talking to her produces incredibly useful ideas which she always manages to present in a most uplifting way. When I don’t talk to her, my case mirrors that of many men, it means I’m working on the problem. If I take the time to talk about it, I’m back on the problem rather than the solution.
However, I understand when she reflexively tries to find out what’s wrong, she is showing me how much she loves me. If I don’t want to talk about it because I’m working on it and I think I’ve got it handled, I’ll just tell her that and she’ll let me troubleshoot. I thank her for her concern, and I normally assure her that I’ll tell her about it later once I’ve finished solving it. This assures her that she’s a vital part of my world, and it also frees me to solve the problem.
WOMAN’S OPENESS
Men show their male freinds that they care by helping them solve their problems. The assumption is that a man won’t share a problem with someone if he doesn’t want help, advice, or someone to come alongside. When a man admits to another man that he has a problem, it is the proverbial cry for help. Men are very often willing to help men who reveal a need like this. Men show their respect, love, commitment and loyalty by solving problems and doing things.
Then they get in relationships with women who open up, doing the exact thing men do when they want someone to help them solve a problem. So, out of love and loyalty to their special woman, they try to help. They try to solve the woman’s problem for her with suggestions and offers to help. Women are often frustrated and infuriated over this practice because they don’t here “I love you,” they hear “let me fix this so I don’t have to listen to your feelings.”
Women can get what they want by telling a man beforehand that she doesn’t want any answers, she just wants him to listen. A man can help by asking beforehand. If no one remembers to say anything or to ask, men should just try to remember. If he forgets, she will certainly remember when he starts problem solving, then she can remind him again.