Ken Solin

Okay, you’ve been dating a guy and you really like him, but something’s missing. You know what you need from a man to sustain a long-term relationship. It’s been a few months, sex is terrific, he’s considerate, and he’s even okay with your cat. What’s missing?

What’s likely missing is the dialogue around emotional intimacy. Every time you ask him how he feels about you or your relationship, he tells you what he thinks. Men and women speak different languages in relationships. I’m a guy, and I know, but after working with men for twenty years, I also know that men can engage in emotional dialogue. Think of this a teachable moment. If you’re willing to help him, he will quickly be able to hold up his end of the conversation.

Why would a man be willing to learn to learn to speak from his heart? After all, everyone knows that men don’t like to talk about their feelings, right? That’s true, until a man realizes that he can get more from you and your relationship when he’s able to tell you how he feels about you. And what man wouldn’t want more from a woman?

Here’s an example. A man tells a woman that he doesn’t think they’re having sex often enough. Her response is that she isn’t feeling sexual. He reiterates he doesn’t think you’re being sexual often enough, and that he doesn’t understand why you don’t get that. The solution isn’t a trick, but rather a language lesson.

You will discover that your man will invest his energy once he understands the benefits. To deepen intimacy,  explain that you love him and enjoy sex with him, but that you need emotional assurance to feel sexual. A woman needs a reason to have sex. A man just needs an opportunity. You can show him what a reason looks like.

Asking him to tell you what’s in his heart is easier if you provide an example. Telling him what’s in your heart first is a good beginning. This is a tough road for a man to travel, but if you’re gentle, loving, and patient, you can help him understand how to access his feelings. A man can hold up his end once he sees that it works for him. Don’t push too hard, because he’ll feel inadequate or foolish, and then you’ve lost him.

If your guy begins a sentence about his feelings for you with “I think”, look into his eyes, smile, and remind him that you already know what he thinks. What you don’t know, and would really love to hear, is how he feels about you and your relationship.

Men know that the emotional playing field isn’t level. What most men don’t know, however, is that they can move from amateur to pro status and level the field easily. Incidentally, age is irrelevant. I’ve seen men from twenty to seventy succeed.

Once a man understands what a woman wants, and he’s figured out that what she wants also works for him, he will become more comfortable and confident speaking from his heart. I’ve seen this scenario play out successfully for twenty years. It’s all about how you approach him regarding emotional intimacy. Remember, gentle, patient, loving.

The male specific issues the great majority of men struggle with are related to divorce, dating, relationships, marriage, unemployment, raising children, and their inability to access and communicate their feelings. Each of these issues can best be resolved in small, confidential groups with other men. It’s entirely unnecessary for men to get into individual therapy if they’re struggling with these issues. What I’ve learned over twenty years working with men is that under the right conditions, men are eminently capable of working together to resolve the issues mentioned. Therapists don’t play any role in this work.

Getting into therapy to resolve any of these issues is wrong on two fronts. First, therapy is expensive, but that would be okay if therapy were a reliable, successful solution for men’s issues. It isn’t by any stretch. Second, male therapists don’t know any more about manhood issues than laymen. Male therapists struggle with all the same issues other men struggle with because therapy has no relevance dealing with the issues mentioned. In fact, male therapists’ training in psychology is irrelevant. Men have to assume the responsibility for their own emotional well-being.

Every single man who dug deep and did the work in my men’s group changed his behavior by working through his issues with other men. That’s worth repeating. Every single man who did the work, succeeded. There are no therapists who have anywhere near that level of success dealing with men’s issues. And worse, when therapists lead men’s groups, they are no longer men’s groups, but group therapy instead. Therapists, who lead men’s group, rob the men in that group of the opportunity to resolve their issues together and learn about themselves in the process.

Men’s groups don’t require a leader of any kind, therapist or otherwise. There’s no necessity for leadership because men can succeed far better without one. Leading men’s groups is a business for therapists, and men’s groups should never be about business. A man in a therapist led group pays for each facilitated meeting he attends, and that’s simply wrong. When men share their real life experiences on an emotional level, the results are vastly superior to any psychological help. Men are flesh and blood, not statistics or case studies, and every man in a men’s group should be an equal. When a leader assumes a role of authority, the men in the group become his patients or clients, and considering that therapists don’t know any more about their manhood than any other men, that’s just wrong-headed.

The work men accomplish in small groups of eight is different from group therapy. All of the work is related to men teaching each other what appropriate male behavior means and how to become better men. They accomplish this through the emotional sharing of their experiences. A man going through a divorce doesn’t need a therapist to tell him he’s in pain or that he should focus on how he’s feeling. What that man can benefit most from is hearing from other men who have gone through divorce who can share, on an emotional basis, how they felt, what they did that worked, and what didn’t work. He can hear how other men in his situation handled the devastating fallout from divorce. That man’s pain, anger, child rearing fears, dating, and ex-wife problems, can be best addressed by men who suffered them, worked through them, and moved beyond them. That information is invaluable, and is as available as the next time the group meets. Men have been meeting together in small groups like mine for decades, albeit in small numbers.

Shared emotional experience isn’t the same as advice, because it’s entirely based on what a man feels, not what he thinks. Advice has nothing to do with feelings. Advice is an opinion, and typically begins with the words, “You should”. Advice is the lowest form of conversation because opinions are debatable. A man sharing how he feels is not offering his opinion. His feelings are his absolute truth. No one can argue about a man’s feelings because that information is authentic when it comes from his heart, not his head.

The difficulty is getting men to realize the enormous value of what they already know. Eight, forty-year old men sitting together can share over three hundred years of real life experience. That’s an encyclopedia of male behavior a group can tap. Nothing is as relevant and real as men sharing their stories on an emotional level.

What most men expect or think is true about men’s group is incorrect. Men avoid emotional intimacy with each other because they have grown weary from years of listening to men who typically offer them lots of advice, judgment, and criticism. Men don’t trust each other because of how they have been treated by other men. There’s no trust in shallow relationships. Men learn it’s best to keep their problems to themselves to avoid an onslaught of advice.

Advice has no place in a men’s group. Men join groups to hear other men speak from their hearts, not their heads. There’s too much noise in their lives already to waste time listening to more gratuitous advice. Men want and deserve better. When men belong to a small, confidential group with other men who care about them, they feel safe unloading the emotional burdens that fester in their souls. They learn to open their hearts and speak from a place most men can’t or won’t because they don’t know how and have never felt safe enough to try. They also make authentic friends, and for many men, this is a first.

No man in a men’s group has to face his painful life’s issues alone, ever again. The sense of comfort knowing that seven other men truly care what happens to him and who speak their truths from their hearts to him can’t be quantified. It’s that big. Trust is a huge part of being in a men’s group, and that trust is unbreakable and enduring. The wimpy men are those who ignore their issues and continue to inflict them on everyone around them. The heroes are the men who face their issues and resolve them. That takes courage.

If you’re a man who feels he might benefit from sharing your issues with other men, my website contains information regarding how to join or start a group. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Being a lone wolf is emotional suicide. There’s value beyond your imagination in joining the pack. Join or start a men’s group and become a better man.

I’ve spent forty years being sexual with women, and in that time I’ve rarely been in a relationship that connected my heart with sex. When I was younger, it didn’t take much to become aroused, and sex was entirely physical. And, since I was capable of physical love, I was able to fake emotional love, but faking emotional love made sex an unconscious act. I don’t like to behave unconsciously about anything I do, so faking love took a willingness to let myself off the hook in a manner I doubt I’d allow a woman to.

I had never learned to connect my heart with my body when making love and it’s that inability that finally caught up to me. After being single for twenty-five years, I met the woman I wanted to spend my life with. I fell in love in a manner I hadn’t before. I wanted to give this woman everything. That’s when I discovered my problem.

Learning to blend the physical with the emotional at sixty-six makes me feel like I’ve been living under a rock, because I missed the intimacy lessons around sex entirely. It took me two years to finally fess up to this issue with my wife. She was surprised, especially since I never indicated any such problem existed.

It was in my men’s group that I started twenty years ago, where I finally learned how to talk about what I was feeling in my heart. I learned this with other men who were similarly challenged. We helped each other learn how to speak what was in our hearts and not just what was in our heads. We were equals in terms of being equally challenged men.

I’ve never attempted to share what was in my heart with a woman, especially around sex. But my wife and I both fell in love in a way that made us feel nothing was off the table. So I brought it up with her recently and expressed my fear around trying to feel something in my heart while still being able to have my body perform. I opened my heart and made myself vulnerable to an extent I never would have in the past.

My wife was surprised, and I think in some ways, relieved, because I don’t think my sexual act was holding up very well. She sensed something wasn’t quite right. So the trick now is to learn, with my wife’s help, how to connect my heart with sex. What I know is that while physical intimacy never frightened me, emotional intimacy always terrified me, because it involves being vulnerable. That goes against everything I learned as a boy in a violent, angry home, where vulnerability would have had disastrous results. There was no trust in my boyhood home, and absent trust, an open heart would have been dangerous.

Is my problem unique? Not at all, because I’ve heard men talk about this for decades. I just never connected the discussions with my issue. I listened while keeping an emotional distance. I disconnected my heart from the conversation and I failed to learn any lessons. I was that frightened.

Now I’m learning to connect these two vital components to love-making. The first step was to share my problem with my wife. We have the kind of marriage that allows for total honesty without fear of repercussions. Trust has never stood in the way of any of our issues. My wife honors my shared problem and wants to work with me to help me make the connection that will deepen the intimacy between us.

This isn’t simple or easy, and I don’t want to suggest otherwise, but it is essential if I hope to finally get it right in a relationship, and I do want to get it right because I feel I’ve lost something because I haven’t. I’ve missed a significant benefit from being in love. Can old dogs learn new tricks? Absolutely, and so can young dogs.

Younger men might consider learning this lesson because it will deepen their relationships and give their relationships endurance and the potential for longevity. The first step is honesty and openness, and that requires both partners to be willing to make themselves entirely vulnerable without fear of potential consequences. Nothing said in openness and honesty can ever be brought up and used as a weapon in a moment of anger. Once trust is breached, the opportunity is lost forever. I could never give a woman a second chance to hurt me after she used my shared issue as a weapon.

Can men learn to connect their bodies with their hearts? Of course, and my only regret is that I waited so long to admit how important this actually is to me. Is it important for other men? It is, if they hope to be in an authentic relationship with a woman.

I would appreciate hearing from readers, and I welcome any comments.