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Subject: can you blame me for wanting you?

                                                          Who's steering this ship anyway?

For the past 20 years I have been helping men discover their strength, both through sharing my own personal exploration as well as professionally. This can look different for different men. For all men this happens through opening up to vulnerability. For nice guys connecting to their personal power means letting go of their people pleasing ways and being assertive. 

Negativity is common for those of us who have had a difficult life or even a series of recent bad experiences. Even if you aren’t predisposed to negative thinking it is difficult to resist negativity under the forces of hardship or social pressure. 

We are living in a very heated time when it come to male-female relationships. As a man the messages can seem contradictory and confusing. On the one hand you hear the message that men are entitled and need to respect what a woman wants, yet on the other hand you hear that women are attracted to confident men, and see women go for the jerks who do what seems disrespectful. You may have even been told to “man up” by women who are frustrated because you haven't made a move yet (but, you were trying to be respectful, right?).

When nice guys maintain their typical nice guy pattern in a relationship they have often been putting their own needs second or may not have been expressing their needs at all. This often builds to resentment in the nice guy, especially when he has been silently expecting reciprocity from his partner or starts to perceive a lack of reciprocation. Resent accumulates to anger and it really has more to do with the nice guy than his partner. What I mean by this is that the nice guy has not expressed his needs, has not communicated his feelings if something does not feel right, or set boundaries for himself to make it clear what is OK and what is not OK for him.

Last week I went over how giving too much of a shit can lead to chronic rejection, pain, and lack of success dating (click here). Today I am addressing how the aspect of caring too much that nice guys have a tendency to do can hurt your relationship. I want to share a personal example to point out how nice guys can appropriately assert their needs without having to do the complete opposite and be a total asshole.

When it comes to women, single men are very preoccupied with not being put in the friend zone. I often get the question "Do you think that means I've been put in the friend zone?" or the exasperated statement "I think she has me in the friend zone." The implication is that this is a completely passive experience and that even if the man is in the friend zone that he has to stay there and tolerate it.

Next Tele-Seminar Today, Monday 12/30 at 12pm

Just a quick reminder about tomorrow's Tele-Seminar on Handling Imbalance in Your Relationship: Monday 12/30 at 12pm ET. I am very excited to announce that Steve Schloss will be my official guest. His book, The Man's Secret to a Happy and Sexy Marriage delves deeply into this topic, and has a lot of practical advice about what men can do when their relationship has become unhappy to help turn the tide. We will go over signs to look for that indicate when men may be unhappy in their relationship, the impact this has on men, and what you can do if this is happening to you.