Why Are Relationships So Difficult?

Why Are Relationships So Difficult?

Why Are Relationships So Difficult?

relationships difficultWhy do so many people find relationships challenging? I regularly hear people describing relationships as stressful, draining, or exhausting. Most people seem to feel that relationships are worth maintaining. But wouldn’t it be nice if relationships were a little easier?

We expect more from relationships these days than our parents and grandparents expected. Our family and friends are more than just a source of company and practical support. We want deep, meaningful connections. We want emotional safety. We want to be loved and accepted for who we really are.

And yet, all too often, we find ourselves dealing with excess emotional drama, or tolerating shallow, unsatisfying interactions. Friends require us to suppress our genuine wants and needs to “fit in”. Our families expect certain things from us, and make our lives miserable if we don’t deliver. Our lovers try to control us. 

And what happens when we find a beautiful, empowering person as a friend or lover, who is actually willing and able to accept us just the way we are? Suddenly we are gripped by internal resistance – fear, shame, or inhibitions. Given the opportunity to experience what we most want, we hesitate. We doubt. We hedge.

Relationship Mistakes

I see people making two major mistakes in dealing with relationships. First, they blame other people. And second, they blame themselves. 

The truth is, nobody is to blame. We all grew up in a culture which punishes us for being ourselves. We learn at an early age that it is dangerous to just act spontaneously. Take any two people, block them from being themselves and acting spontaneously, and the relationship is going to be difficult. 

We will find relationships difficult until we reconnect with our authentic self, and our authentic needs and wants. Relationships can be clean, simple, and empowering when we are actually in them as our authentic selves.

You Don’t Need To Be An Alpha Male

You Don’t Need To Be An Alpha Male

Hi everyone! I’m Jenny Hale and this is another one of my truth bomb series, where I look at pieces of misinformation about relationships, and what the real truth is underneath (if there’s one at all).

Today’s truth bomb is this idea that what women are really attracted to is a “man’s man”, you know, the alpha male. This entire industry, I don’t know how many millions of dollars are spent by a hopeful young men to listen to slightly older young men tell them how to be a man. But let me tell you, at the end of the day, speaking as a woman who’s worked as a relationship coach with hundreds of women that it’s not true.

You don’t need to man up.

You’re not “beta”.

Yes, there’s a whole lot of research that’s gone into the explaining and misinformation around the use of the terms alpha and beta and I’m not going to go into that here because I really want to just hone in on this idea and what it does in relationships.

Our culture has a picture of a man’s man, a real man, an alpha man and we all kind of know what that picture is, right? He’s physically strong and dominant, and he’s confident. He knows where he’s going and he’s somebody who seems to never make a mistake, or if he does, he just pushes on through and turns it into a win.

And women are we attracted to him.

So a couple of things I just want to put to rest about this.

Number one, the characteristics of the man’s man in our culture are pretty much the characteristics of a narcissist. And it’s true, if you can present as a narcissist you will attract codependent women because codependent women are attracted to those features.

The insensitivity, the self-absorption, the grandiosity, the big stories about how great they’re going to be, and the ability to just push people aside and get their stuff done in the world – those things are attractive to a certain kind of woman. The thing is, women who are codependent are codependent for a reason, and the reason is that they had terrible childhoods and they’re full of issues.

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If you make yourself look like a narcissist so that you can attract a codependent woman who’s completely into you, and dependent on you, and focuses her whole life on you, you’re going to have to deal with her childhood issues, and they’re not pretty.

If you want a healthy well-balanced woman who can take care of herself and have resources left over to take care of you, who will help you to be a better person, and will help you to be a fully rounded human being, then it’s not a good plan to make yourself look like one of these alpha males.

Now, you might get more one-night stands by presenting like an alpha and doing all the pickup artist stuff, but …

… what you won’t get is a safe, secure a long-term relationship where you can be yourself, and be accepted for who you really are, and just relax.

If you use these kind of techniques, if you present this man’s man, it’s stressful. And you have to keep it up for the rest of your life, or you lose the person.

I will say again that there is a nugget, and the nugget is this.

What a healthy, well balanced fully rounded woman wants is a healthy, well balanced, fully rounded man. If you are still psychologically a child, if you’re looking for mummy to take care of you, or you’re looking for a source of sex that won’t give you too much trouble, then you won’t be attractive to a fully rounded functional human woman. You will be attractive to the damaged women who are magnetically attracted to  bad boys and problem boys and want to spend their life looking after ducklings with broken wings.

You don’t have to be a duckling with a broken wing (or a duckling with a broken wing pretending to be Superman) in order to get a really rewarding long-term relationship.

So what does a woman really want?

Because I tell you, women don’t really want the stuff that all the pickup artists are telling you they really want. They might have a fling with that, but that’s not what they actually want in a partner for the long term.

If you want someone who’s going to take care of you when you’re old, then you need to offer something else other than this narcissistic macho alpha persona. All you have to be is real. A real human being, honest and authentic, not perfect but willing to work on all of the areas where you are not perfect, and willing to improve to spend a lifetime improving.

I tell you, one of the things that just amazes me is that these guys don’t get – these guys who teach all these courses to men about how to get women – not one of them I’ve seen say this.

What women really, really go for is potential.

Women love a man who’s going somewhere. Not a man who’s going somewhere materially, like he’s got a business and is going to make a lot of money. A man who’s going somewhere as a human being. A man who’s capable of growth. A man who becomes a better person every year.

That is what will get you the high quality women.