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Thinking too much about your relationship can ruin it.
By Ani Anderson — Written on Oct 11, 2016
The year I got married, I wrote in my journal, "Why doesn’t he understand me?" I was 21 years old then and felt lonely. Now in my late 30s (and a coach), I know this is a very common complaint amongst women.
In fact, even when the primary focus of a client's coaching relationship with me is business, the topic of conversation generally drifts back to a woman’s partner and his inability to be the man she really wants in her life. Usually, it's because she doesn’t feel understood or supported emotionally in some way.
My female clients often get upset that they are doing all the personal development work in the relationship and their husbands aren't doing any.
They are the ones who go to the seminars, workshops, courses, and reading books. They are the ones working on their relationship and trying to make it better. These clients perceive that their partners are not doing the work and so don’t value the relationship.
The general notion is, "if men did the work too, they would understand women, and their relationships would be better for it." But men don't enjoy thinking about relationships as much as woman do.
But men aren't the problem.
Men and their perceived lack of effort is not the problem. The problem lies within our inability to understand and accept ourselves. The more we think about the problems in our relationship, the worse they get.
Some of the smartest women around seem to have the hardest time feeling understood and accepted in relationships — because they spend so much time overthinking everything that they can’t actually enjoy themselves!
They think if they can figure it out they won’t have to deal with the problems ever again. And all that time they spend overthinking and "figuring", life is gently passing by.
When it comes down to it, overthinking doesn't serve us. Men don’t understand women, and let’s face it, we don’t understand men.
I watch my boys (ages 11 and 8) who seem to behave like some kind of different species rather than human beings. My daughter and I roll our eyes together as the boys tempt death on almost a daily basis and do silly, ridiculous things we wouldn’t in a million years be caught dead doing.
As I observe my children, it becomes obvious to me that I just don’t understand boys.
So what do we actually want?
Men don’t wander around complaining that women don’t understand them, but as women, we yearn to be understood.
We want our men to "get us", listen to us, praise us, and acknowledge us. We want them to give us gifts without asking for them and do the housework when we are tired, or massage us after a long day.
But, what we really what we want is for men to figure us out and then "get it right" so we can get what we want without asking for it outright. That’s the female fantasy: our man gives us just the right gift — and we didn't even have to ask for it!
Because asking somehow takes away the glory of the gifts, the "understanding" that we seek. We think if we need to ask for what we want, somehow the gesture doesn’t count.
When men don’t do what we want them to do, we overthink the meaning of it all and make assumptions about what it all means ("he doesn’t love me!"). And so we continue to play these games. Why?
Because we’re women, it's natural! And men really do want to please us, that’s the thing. But they don’t like to figure relationships out because they are guys.
Men and women think differently. We actually DO like to figure things out and we love to talk about relationships. But since we often change our minds, say things we don’t mean, and mean things we don’t say, men don’t understand us.
Their brains don’t work that way. Men say what they mean and they mean what they say. They are not stupid, they’re just wired differently than women.
The natural state of women is different.
Women are naturally wild, changing, flirtatious, and mysterious. We don’t make sense because our thinking is fueled by love, not reason. In fact, we don’t actually WANT men to understand us! That's what we think we want, but it’s not really what we want.
We crave to be understood, but what we truly want is to just be loved and accepted in our wild, natural, feminine nature. We want to be accepted in the fact that we are a mystery, a beautiful mystery that we actually love to try to solve, but cannot be solved.
Our mysterious nature can only be embraced. As mysterious women, we think the way to get love and appreciation is to be understood. But if we could just stop thinking so much, the love that we seek would flow to us more easily.
And that flow is absolutely possible. So if you want to stop struggling in a relationship where you feel like your partner doesn’t understand you, stop overthinking and simply try enjoying and accepting yourself.
Accept what you think and feel, express yourself, and let your man love you for the beautiful, wild woman that you truly are. Women who overthink everything make themselves miserable and can’t enjoy the loving relationships that are sitting right there in front of them.
So stop the struggle, stop overthinking, and start enjoying yourself and your relationships.
Do you want to learn how to have successful relationships? Come on over to my site where I'll give you 5 Steps to Make Any Relationship Successful!
