Ken Donaldson: How Should Men Respond to Women’s Tears?
How Should Men Respond to Women’s Tears?
New research suggest that when women cry, men’s testosterone levels go down. This must mean that men are turned off by women crying, right?
Wrong!
Most likely it means that men are invited to respond without their sexual testosterone and instead work to understand, appreciate, accept and validate the woman’s feelings.
We live in a culture that teaches most of us very little about emotions and relationships. So when tears show up in a relationship, many times there is either emotional avoidance or an emotional explosion.
Either way, the expression of emotion is not reinforced.
However, by practicing some simple active listening skills all of us can become more accepting of emotions and deal with them in a much more loving manner.
Active listening means putting your own agenda and preconceived notions about how things “should” be. It means to put your self in the other person’s shoes so you can better understand and empathize them.
This is the glue the builds and maintains relationships.
Marry YourSelf First has some great tools to improve your relationship and emotional expression skills.