"My husband doesn't know how to comfort
me."
I understand where you're coming from. My
name is Paul Friedman.
I founded The Marriage Foundation and
I'd like to give you some
insight into this. A lot of it
you know has to do with the fact that
your husband is a man
and men are not as connected
to their feelings as women are.
And sometimes we have to make allowances
but it's not so easy so I'm going to
give you
some ideas for how to get him
to comfort you and I'm going to share
with you some things
that have the opposite effect. In other
words
if you do certain things, it will
tend to make him less comforting
to you because men are uncomfortable
with their own feelings and with your
feelings as well,
and it's built-in. It's innate to a man
because biologically, he's
sort of designed you might say to be
a practical defender,
sort of a warrior. And so warriors
are always on the edge of
war of fighting for you, of defending you,
of being there for you
and that's biologically and it
translates into our modern times
in different ways where men
want to provide for their family.
They want to beat up the guy who is
threatening his family by hitting on his
wife,
things like that. And so, a woman is
forced to make some concessions in this
area
to allow her husband
to be who he is
and not be impacted,
not feel like
you're being let down. How do you do
that?
Well, the things that you should not do
is you shouldn't come to him asking
to be comforted in a way
where he's going to feel pushed away.
So because of men's tendencies
what you want to do is come to him
in a demure way where
you're hurting but you're not so
caught up in self-pity
that he's afraid of falling into that
self-pity trap.
You can do that without expressing
the need but by
showing with body language
where maybe you have your head hanging
down,
sadness
where his tendency is going to be
to ask. "Are you okay?"
And then instead of going blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
which so many women do,
you just say, "I guess I'll be okay."
You do it more low-key
because you don't want to scare him
and then he will be more receptive
to comfort you. Now if
you're just desperate and you want to
really express
that you have the need, you just put your
hand on his hand,
"Honey, I just need to hold your
hand
to feel your strength." So you're not
saying to him
here's what you need to do.
You're letting him know that he is your
strength,
he is your rock and you just want to
receive some of that energy.
Do you see the difference? It can be
subtle
but if you're paying attention, you'll
realize
that your husband is there for you when
you need him
but he can't be put in a position
of where his masculinity
is challenged from his point of view.
You have to learn to be sensitive
towards him.
You want him to be sensitive towards you
and understand you and that's going to
take
some understanding on your part of
him. And
we live in a "what about me"
world right now. Probably, it's always
been that way
but that's not what marriage is all
about. Marriage is all about
the other and I say the same thing to
men
when they come to me. If you really want
to be happy in your marriage
and who doesn't. Isn't that why you got
married in the first place to be happy?
You have to make this shift.
You have to make this shift to loving
him more than your own
needs and I don't say that
just to be cute or romantic.
It's like an equation. The more love
that you give,
no, wrong. Not the more you will get bac.k
It's not what I was going to say. The
more love that you
give the more you will feel.
Because that love that you're giving is
love and as you give it that's when you
really
feel it. It's a big misconception by the
way and I don't mean to get off track
here but it's a really important
distinction.
Everyone wants to be loved
and you are, but to really feel
love you give it
and you will feel the love that you are
giving
and that should be your desire to
feel love and not
feel loved.
It's really an interesting thing. The
more you do that
the more you try that, the more
you will feel loved anyway
and that goes along with comfort. How
often do you comfort
your husband? How often do you check in
with him?
Men aren't as demonstrative as
women when it comes to expressing their
feelings. How often do you look
at his face and his eyes? And go, "Wow,
he really needs some tenderness now,"
and then some women blow it they go, "Oh,
do you need some tenderness?" Of course
he's going to say, "No, I'm fine,"
but it wouldn't hurt to comfort him
even if he doesn't need the comfort so
you're not taking
a risk by comforting him
anyway. And for men oftentimes,
usually being comforted
means being treated lovingly
sexually too.
In this day and age, a lot of
women
are taught to find that repulsive which
is insane
because for a man that's a huge
connection
of intimacy is their sexuality
and many women turn their husbands away.
Turn them off.
"Oh, I have a headache." "Oh, you have no idea
how tired I am."
"Oh, I've been with the kids all
day. Now is not a good time.
Let's plan it." No.
If he wants it, give it to him.
Why hold back? In a few minutes
you'll be into it too
anyway so there's so much here.
There's so much about comforting but the
real trick,
the real trick is to give
more than to expect.
If you're not already doing that,
you're literally draining from your
marriage
rather than adding to it. And think of
your marriage as a container,
and what you put into that container
there's only two of you
who have the ability to put anything
into that container.
And if all you're putting into that
container is
loving support, loving compliments,
loving everything and not putting in the
toxic
waste of demands and criticism
and those kind of things, you'll find
that your marriage improves.
I hope this was helpful to you.
There's a lot of videos in this channel.
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you have a comment, leave a comment. Let
me know what you think. I would love to
hear from you
and if you have a question, you could
write in
to our counselors. They're on standby --
it's a free service
from The Marriage Foundation or you
could
put a question in the comments and I
will try my best to get to it.
So blessings to you and remember the
more you learn about marriage
every day. Learn a little bit more about
marriage
for the purpose of improving
the happiness and expanding the love.
Why not? Okay. Blessings to you