Women are Better at … – Excerpt from a book in progress about Satisfaction

Women are better at being women than men are at being men.

Photo by Preillumination SeTh on Unsplash

This is not man bashing.

Photo by Ana-Maria Nichita on Unsplash

Imagine your three big terracotta flower pots on the sunny side of the house where the tomato plants soak up the sun.  Even though they have that bitter tomato plant fragrance they smell fabulous in the summer afternoon heat.  The pots where the chile plants were sown and watered got grouped by the gate in the shadow of the big tomato plant pots.

Photo by Justus Menke on Unsplash

Due to the conditions the tomatoes ripen and each plant gives lots of fruit.  Whereas the chiles are small and few.  The chiles have the same desire to grow.  Tomatoes grow into tomatoes.  Chiles into chiles.  Their success depends a lot on the local conditions.

The local conditions in a woman includes her management of the Female Frixion (see below).

The local conditions in a man are impacted by his dealing with life through the Male Stack.

This is not fanning the flames of the battle of the sexes.  It’s not saying there is a competition to achieve self-realization as a man or woman. It’s not a race to embody your gender before your spouse embodies theirs. It’s not a comparison because we are talking apples and oranges here.

The Female Frixion generates an emotional conflict in women about the prevalence of one of the three lives in the moment or stage of life.   Those lives are:  Professional, Romantic and Maternal.  In men they are: Professional, Romantic and Paternal.  Men don’t live the same friction of feeding these three lives in the same way.  Women internalize the friction and men externalize the stress.  Women make themselves responsible for their emotions about the 3-way balance of these inner lives.  Men can often not understand how or why they would be responsible for their own emotions. 

Each woman struggles for years with this aspect of their life.  Often it can make them not feel good about themselves.  A woman might start to think she is not ’a good mother’.   The truth may be she is a good mother but the friction that follows her around, like a 4 year old girl follows around her older sister, won’t let her in peace.  

This friction  heightens her awareness to her inner lives and cultivates the connection with her instinct.  Her instinct is about life.  Her female instinct responds to the moment that her mind is focused on.  It is not simply her instinct about how she feels about her emotions.  That is included.  But it needs to be understood that her instinct, the instinct, is fast and true and collects no emotional baggage.  We collect the baggage with our low emotion ego trolling.  The more emotional luggage we insist on hauling around life the less we can listen to and recognize the instinct.  

Lateral consideration of the three lives all at once that is the mental/emotional process of women is in contrast to the vertical surging that is the one-at-a-time male style process.  This is the Male Stack.  Instead of a need to bring all three lives forward with the same grace and focus like a woman, the man engages one life at a time.  The male life management style may appear to require less subtlety and finesse from the man himself because according to him ‘it is what it is,’ ‘what you see is what you get.’ That is the challenge staring each man in the face: To make his living of the three lives in his own unique way a vertically integrated generator of male instinctual response.

Because the female consideration is not as reactive as the surging male she can appear to be powered by an unsure woman.   That is not always true.  Perhaps rarely true. 

The decision making circuitry to decide about the same thing as a man is different in a woman.  That needs to be understood.  And appreciated. So it can impact our lives.  Reflected upon so it can impact our marriages.  Impact our language, sayings, expectations, our workplace (like making workplace based daycare more possible).  

An excellent illumination on the reality of women’s decision making is How Women Decide by Therese Huston. The book focuses on the extra and unfair work a woman has to do quickly, mentally in the moment to make her decision appear as valid as possible in the eyes of men. Huston also delves into the innate decision making differences between men and women. She highlights if a woman can grasp how to utilize her natural mental/emotional circuitry in a business setting then she can deactivate the resistance to her style of thinking. For our personal relationships the useful insights that are supported with how-to ideas are relevant to generating good conversation with your spouse to elevate understanding.

When we choose we, men and women, can update our beliefs about women.  We can learn a lot if we take the time and observe how this friction is a reality.  Communicate the fact of it and tell stories about it.  Resist the laziness that permits this difference to damage and not enlighten.  Resist blaming a woman for being a woman.

Women are not better than men.  Men are not better than women.  However because of the Female Frixion women are generally more true to their nature than men are to theirs.

This lack of connection with one’s essence as a man can cause stress in a man.  Without a strong emotional core, a man under stress can blame others for wanting to help him, he can delve into some form of drugs (including the internet). A man, even if he is really a good man, if he feels stressed, unappreciated or lost can get angry and become violent.  

Most likely women would think men experience this friction between the inner lives but they don’t.  So in difficult moments that require a couple to be on the same page, they often aren’t.  This can convert an important or difficult conversation into an argument.  Faster than we can stop it.  The argument is powered not by the issue being discussed but by the lack of understanding.  And exacerbated by how we feel about not being understood or understanding. 

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If women have the Female Frixion to connect them to their instinct, what do men have?  What can be the sand in the seashell that is a positive friction to produce a pearl?  

Ask yourself:

What do you stand for?  As a man, husband.

What do you uphold?  In the stress of providing for your family on a daily basis and also in the search for a sense of purpose.  

How agile are you within the Male Stack (of the three lives)?

Do you want to cultivate your response to the instinct?

What do you adhere to?  When the conversation turns sexist.

What do you cause in others?  By what you resist.

What are you in service to? For immediate and lifetime results.