How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 70

OK, so let’s review. We know expressions of anger can be healthy, but nagging is not one of those
expressions. We know that there are more vulnerable emotions under your anger. So here’s the deal –
you have to genuinely find those deeper emotions, and then share them.
Note that I have italicized the word genuinely – cause if you aren’t being genuine in your feeling, this
will become manipulation and that’s even worse than nagging cause at least nagging is more direct. So
don’t mess up this advice by messing with his mind and manipulating. What you need to do is find that
genuine feeling of rejection or hurt or whatever, embody it (meaning feel it in your entire body), look
him in the eyes, and let him see it. And then, without attacking or belittling him, tell him about it. Keep
your tone soft so you don’t sound like a mother guilting her son.
So, for example, “When I have to remind
you that it’s trash day every week, I feel so
alone here. I feel so unsupported – like you
don’t love me, and like you don’t really care
what my days are like or how hard I’m
trying. I so want our marriage to feel good to
both of us. It’s the most important thing in
the world to me. This hurts so much, David.”
Here’s why this will work –men are
intuitively oriented to protect women. It’s
just what they are instinctively programmed
to do. Dr. Roy Baumeister explored this
concept in his book, Is There Anything
Good About Men?. For example, men want
to hold doors open for women, and they
want to solve women’s problems (even if all a woman wants is for him to listen). This aspect of men’s
psyche is likely to be evolutionary supported because if a man takes care of and protects his woman,
his offspring are more likely to survive and thus his DNA marches on.
So this is good news for you. Because if you approach him from a soft, honest, feminine sensitivity, it
should tap the efficient, get-things-done masculine aspect of his personality. (In contrast, nagging is not
a vulnerable, soft, open communication. So all nagging does is kick in his defensiveness).
I’ve seen this work time and time again. But it’s got to be sincere on your part. AND I’d also suggest
you pick your battles. We ladies can be a bit too picky, and it’s good to have reasonable expectations of
our partner so he has room to breathe. If you have molded your partner into perfection, you’ll lose
respect for him – a topic for another post.
OK, so let’s review:
1.Pick your battles. Don’t try to make your partner perfect.
2.Go underneath your anger to the more vulnerable feelings hiding out there.
3.Sincerely show your man these feelings with your eyes, the tone of your voice, and your words.
4.Mother Nature should take care of the rest.
If it sounds simple, it’s not. Anger is easy. Deeper, vulnerable-feeling emotions are much harder to
express. But healthy relationships require these sorts of efforts to keep them out of dysfunction. So this
is an example of the “relationships take work” mantra we all love to say, but then don’t actually follow
through with.
Of course, nothing is fool proof, so it is possible that your man is so turned off that even showing him
how he impacts you will have little effect. In this case, you may want to consider a couples therapist.

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