Conscious Communication in Relationship: Men vs. Women

Even though we might seek conscious communication in relationship, the truth is that when it comes to relationships between men and women, we simply don’t understand each other. Even though we think we do. We think we understand because we imagine our partner is just like us. Moreover, we tend to believe our way is the right and obvious way. We don’t realize that in our “rightness,” we make the other person and their way wrong. Our seemingly appropriate judgement, laced with hints of superiority, repeated, if even infrequently, harms relationships.

The misunderstandings between male and female, masculine and feminine, views of the world exist at much greater levels than most could ever imagine.

Conscious communication — speaking and listening

While we’re typically not conscious of our poor communications patterns, they do damage none the less. The moment you think your perspective, your approach, is right, it inherently makes the other perspective, their approach, wrong. The masculine makes the feminine wrong. The feminine makes the masculine wrong.

This divides us. It creates the unending battles that often remain unspoken and unexpressed – sometimes for decades. It might seem as if these frustrations have been repeatedly expressed over and over and over again, and “shouldn’t we be over it by now?” becomes the judgement. Yet it’s not over until it’s over — for both people. Real communication only happens when the message is received.

If the communication isn’t spoken in a way that the listener – the receiver – can hear (and more importantly experience), they will never actually “get” our message. Unfortunately, when we don’t feel heard, we’ll continue, sometimes overtly and sometimes in deeply subtle ways, to fight for what we want. Our feminine side will even lean on passively aggressive ways to get what feels so important — for our perspective, for our feelings.

When a couple revisits old conversations and upsets repeatedly there’s a reason. We must recognize that we tend to repeat the same message in the same way over and over again, hoping that, finally, this time our partner will hear us. What if that is the antithesis of conscious communication in relationship? What if it’s our responsibility when our partner isn’t getting it? What if listener and speaker share equal burden in the effectiveness of communication?

Conscious conversations in a conscious relationship – A real life example

I worked with a couple last week who love each other deeply, who have a beautiful relationship, and they want more. They know where they’ve disconnected over the years. They know where it’s not as fulfilling as it could be. In our coaching last time, without looking for it, we spontaneously found ourselves exploring a recurring challenge they’ve faced for 30 years of marriage.

She had shared her perspective many times. He’d listened many times, but not heard. He had his perspective. He didn’t “get” hers. He thought he had listened. Yet, nothing changed.

She hadn’t felt “gotten,” received. She hadn’t felt heard in nearly 30 years. The upset stayed quietly unresolved, until the next time it arose. Then the conversation repeated. Again, nothing changed.

The reason nothing changed – time after time, year after year – was because they couldn’t hear each other. They couldn’t hear each other because the differences in their experiences were so extreme. They were from two different worlds –  as John Gray put it when he described conscious communication in relationship nearly 30 years ago in “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.”  Still our society has spent decades trying to convince us that men and women are the same.

It’s true. We are the same on many, many levels. And, we are different on many, many levels. We have very different needs. We have very different ways of communicating. We feel and experience life differently.

The moment we are willing to stop resisting the differences between the masculine and feminine — if we’re willing to stop thinking that our way is the right way — then our differences can become a source of joy and pleasure, rather than pain and misery.

When we lack conscious communication between men and women, we might never directly say to him or her, “Your way is wrong,” but remember that if you’re proving you are right, you are also proving they are wrong.

Again, in most relationships, this does not happen overtly or directly. Often, we believe we’re being kind and loving with good intention. Yet intended kindness can still create resentment and distance, decrease your sexual attraction, and sometimes kill love when we don’t speak and listen consciously.

Conscious connection between men and women — an uncommon perspective

In our coaching conversation last week, I offered the couple an uncommon perspective on relating. Similarly, when participants at the Divine Masculine-Feminine Retreat look at the multi-faceted Communications Model, they typically find themselves blown away by the glaring reality that we truly do speak so differently.

If every person in relationship, everyone who wants to be in relationship, understood this Masculine-Feminine Communications Model, upsets would end so much more quickly. They also wouldn’t happen nearly as often.

Learning first to understand each other, we can meet each other in ways that allow loving conscious conversations to flow, smiles to grow, and laughter to deepen. Sadly, we’re not taught that men and women speak differently and argue differently and we need to learn.

Understanding and feeling bring change

I reminded the couple of the core needs of men and women, and combined that with an invitation to speak from their feelings. Many couples struggle to express and communicate feelings, because it’s not something we’re taught to do. In many cases we’re actually taught to deny and hide our feelings. Yet when it comes to love, feelings are the language of intimacy. Our capacity to understand feelings resolves hurts quickly and therefore emotional literacy matters.

For this couple, the combination of understanding the need in her that wasn’t being met as well as her ability to speak about how that unmet need felt (in a way that he could hear) changed everything for the first time in 30 years. That’s the power of conscious communication in relationship.

Through his active listening with her, she felt heard, saying, “I feel like you finally got it.” He agreed, saying words similar to those I’ve heard time and time again from clients, “I’ve never seen it that way before. I had no idea that’s what you were going through. That’s the last thing I want you to experience.”

Their challenge related to what we call in the Needs Model, a “sense of safety” for her and, ultimately, a “sense of influence” for him.

The Feminine Needs to Feel Safe 

You see, in a conscious relationship, when there’s masculine and feminine embodiment in the two partners, you have an unending dance of the feminine needing a “sense of safety” and the masculine needing, and more importantly, embodying a “sense of influence.” When those two dynamics of “protect” and “be protected,” actually work, it’s extraordinary.

Unfortunately many men I work with struggle to “get” what safety actually means to a woman. Yet, men, it’s worth the effort to really receive a woman’s communication about her experience of safety. To be even clearer, when we talk about the feminine feeling safe, it’s about feeling safe physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually safe now and in the future. 

The Masculine Wants to Protect

Back to this couple, there had been a particular dynamic that created a sense of “unsafe” for her. He had no idea that a behavior that seemed so simple and even insignificant to him, had a huge impact on her ability to relax and truly feel safe and supported.

When he heard the impact on how she felt, he again said words like so many other masculine men do when they “get” her need for safety, “I spend my life committed to you and my family feeling safe. So, to hear that this thing, that I thought was no big deal, was actually making you feel not safe, makes me feel sad and even ashamed.”

Conscious communication in relationship eliminates conflict

That’s hearing each other. That’s being real. That’s being vulnerable. That’s where conflict turns into communion. The repeating unresolved conflict of over 30 years wasn’t completely dissolved in that little-over-an-hour conversation, but their connection deepened dramatically. It deepened not because they were working on the connection, but because they shared real-ly and authentically. They listened to each other’s feelings and experience.

Maybe that seems hard or complicated. It’s actually not, when you learn how.

Fundamentally, embodying conscious communication in relationship makes all the difference between days, years, or even decades of disconnection vs. days, years, and decades of deepened love. So how did this couple have this conscious conversation exactly? 

Here are the 3 key steps to resolving old hurts through intentional communication…

First, you have to admit there’s an upset or an unresolved hurt. We have to admit it to ourselves and then we need to admit it to our partner and this is not as easy as it seems.

Second, as partners we have to be willing to do what’s called Active Listening. Active Listening, defined by Carl Rogers and Richard Farson in the 1950’s, means that, as the listener, we take equal responsibility in the conversation to ensure that the intended communication is received. One specific way to listen actively invites the listener to respond with a reflective summary of what he or she heard. Carl Rogers called this Reflective Listening.

Third, even when it’s not easy to hear, we need to be willing to hear the impact our actions or behaviors have on the other person. If appropriate, we need to be willing to understand their perspective and, maybe even apologize.

Both people are responsible for outcome and experience when you have conscious communication in relationship. That in turn means the number of happy days far outweigh the number of unhappy days. 

Men vs. women

We’ve heard about the battle of sexes for far too long. Men and women go to battle in a fight for the love they want. They fight for acceptance. They fight to be known as they are.

When fear leads the fight, we try to get love on our own terms, within the bounds of our love comfort zones. We fight to have our partner behave like we do because we know how to navigate that territory. Yet, it never works because the one we’re loving isn’t like us.

Unconsciously, men can want women to be less emotional, more rational, more focused, or, in other words, more like men. On the flip side, women often seek the sensitive, vulnerable, and receptive in the men they love – wanting them to be more like women. This can feel comfortable, but it rarely creates sexual polarity and passion.

Everyone can embody all of the qualities just mentioned. None are good or bad, but some are more naturally masculine and others more feminine. It is critically important to notice our tendency, sometimes our strong tendency, to want our partners to be more like ourselves and less like themselves. These attempts to change our partner end up perpetuating the men vs. women battle that can never be won in love. 

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It can no longer be men versus women, or even you versus me. Those are the subtle and unconscious ways that we separate, divide, defend, and often destroy our relationships when we don’t see, understand, and appreciate our differences.

So let’s shift men versus women, me versus you, into us, united in love — which, by the way, is the only thing that allows us to stay united in passion.