Sarah Dawn Moore:
Questions:
1) I’m a typical competitive serial CEO male. I’ve noticed that my wives and girlfriends develop an intuition that if they sit next to me, touch me, and speak gently, they get whatever they want. Because it breaks the boundary between “person and mate”. I ‘feel’ touch and femininity as ‘respect’. And I experience respect as love. Is this advice you give?
2) I need my ‘nothing box’ pretty badly. Most men do. Though I like it when my wife or girlfriend is around, I just want to be left alone. I’ve noticed that these women develop the intuition that if they bring me coffee, water, anything and then sit with me quietly, I eventually want to talk to them. So there is some relationship between proximity to the calm women instill in men, the resolution of internal conflicts in the nothing box, and eventually wanting to talk. I realize that this kind of patience is often troubling for modern women. And is best done late at night. I’m just making the observation that ‘the water boils when it’s ready’. And trying to rush it only makes it worse. My wife was brilliant at ‘dragging me out’ with love and respect rather than pressing and making it about her.
3) “Hurt, Pain, Fear” are not exactly how most high-performing men feel. (female empathy in psychology doesn’t always cross-sex boundaries). It’s more a sense of loss, disappointment, frustration, or disrespect. In fact, something I try to teach female therapists is men find attribution of feminine emotions to their masculine versions as something on the order of insulting to disgusting. IMO this accounts for the ‘market failure’ of therapy (70/30 split) in helping men – who are as equally in need of it as women. Men want help in broadening their shoulders not lightening their loads.
Thank you for your work. You’re the best there is. (IMO demonstrating that skill is the result of apprenticeship and craftsmanship more so than credentialism).
