The Independent's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission.
The two major complaints that women make in their relationships
Taken from 'The Man's Guide to Women'
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
In our Love Lab, we found that women have two major complaints about men. This first complaint is: “He is never there for me.” The second complaint is: “There isn’t enough intimacy and connection.”
These women feel alone even when they are in a relationship. In many ways, these are related complaints. These women cannot trust their men to be there for them when they need them. Most of the time, this is about being there for them emotionally: listening to them, caring for them, and safeguarding their hearts.
In contrast, men have two major complaints about women: “There’s too much fighting, and there’s not enough sex.”
Sound familiar? These men are also lonely even when they are in a relationship. We found that men actually want intimacy just as much as women, but they feel that intimacy when there’s less fighting and more sex.
These separate complaints from men and women are, in fact, causally related and can be addressed through a simple skill we like to call attunement. When men “attune” to their women, there is less fighting, more frequent (and better) sex, and both men and women no longer feel so alone.
It is also the skill that leads to genuine emotional connection, which in turn leads to trust, which in turn leads to you giving women the number one thing they need and want. In other words, this is a big deal.
In our interviews in the Love Lab, we asked men and women whether or not they felt they could talk to their partners (especially when they felt sad, angry, or in need of affection), and we discovered a fundamental fact: The fights of many couples result from men dismissing women’s emotions instead of attuning to them. You dismiss a woman’s emotions every time you try to fix them, distract her from them, minimize them, mock them, or ignore them altogether.
Learn the relatively simple and fundamental skill of attunement and your relationship with women will change profoundly. (Attunement will also serve you well at work, in parenting, and in all of your relationships.)
We found that men who learned emotional attunement got what they ultimately wanted from their relationships: less fighting and more sex.
This extract was republished with permission from the authors. The Man's Guide to Women by John Gootman, PhD and Julie Schwartz, PhD is available now
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments