What Men Are Confused About, Yet Want Women to Care About by Paul Dobransky

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I have had a ton of my guy friends (and clients) write or call me recently to ask why in the world I don't write more pointed advice in this blog JUST FOR MEN.

I didn't have an easy answer.

The book, The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, is just as useful to men as it is to women. After all, it is the precise psychological steps of courtship that have existed since the beginning of time. They have been hidden, a secret of sorts I think simply because psychology is invisible. We all need visible shapes and symbols to put ideas into practical use. It's the whole reason we first developed written language!

Yet, the guys sometimes get scared away by the word "love," or the phrase "falling in love." It sounds so... final. And as you know by now - reading the book, and/or the blog - men are hard-wired biologically to AVOID commitment unless some very precise conditions happen in a relationship.

So what may sound on the surface to be very feminine subjects, are in fact absolute necessities for all people to know about - men included.

I came back at my friends and clients with the request for what they specifically, as men, would want to know about. What is not openly addressed in the pop literature or culture? Things that they don't think women want to talk about, or would "get," from the feminine sensibility, about the masculine. Or maybe flat-out wouldn't care that they really do need to know.

Men need women, and women need men. There is no "battle between the sexes." Only miscommunication.

Which is why the end of my email tag lines at drpaul@womenshappiness.com for women, and paul@doctorpaul.net for men both read:

"The future of the world will not be determined between nations, but rather, in the relations between men and women." -D.H. Lawrence

We're equal, but different. And nothing good gets done unless we work together.

HERE ARE THE MOST PRESSING QUESTIONS I GOT FROM MEN:

1. Who should pay for dates, and why does it always seem to be me?

2. Why do some people prefer to live together rather than marry (and how do I get in on that deal?)

3. Why do we give engagement rings, and why is it necessary?

4. Why don't many women get "guy humor?" I'm just being ME.

5. Why do women think there's an "old boy's club?" We're just being OURSELVES.

6. Why do they always expect me to "make the first move" on dates?

7. and the related, Why do women think that men have social advantages - that they have it harder than men do in dating and relationships? I'd love to be in a satisfying relationship but I'm afraid to approach THEM!

8. What if I am "not the marrying type?" Is that WRONG? They make me feel like it's wrong. The truth is that I'd like to be someday, but only if it feels like it would improve my life, not add even more duties to it.

9. (Related to # 8): How can I BE George Clooney someday?

10. (Related to #9): How can I NOT BECOME George Clooney someday?

If you are a woman, you might be surprised by these questions, but they are among the most common I am asked by men. If you are a man, you might be shaking your head yes in recognition.

A lot of guys are actually AFRAID to ask these questions in a public forum, and yet they are there even if they are unsaid. They won't go away. Part of the reason may be that, as we just observed, men need women. They especially need women to admire them, and if they ask hard questions they really do think about - the type some women would not want to hear, or would not want to have an answer to - that they may be outcast, and even further away from the goal of getting together with women.

In their Reptilian Brains, where the gender instincts code for masculinity or femininity, the male is also passionately concerned with how his rank is perceived among other men. This is why men "don't ask for directions," and "don't talk about feelings."

In our mindset it somehow makes us come across as "weak," or of low rank to do so.

So let's answer some of these questions in blog entries of their own. It needs to be done, because you would be surprised how many men are walking around in confusion over why they seem to be needed less and less by women every day. Some men fear that women don't even care to know what they secretly worry about.

A number of years ago, as I was building my models for teaching patients how to more rapidly diminish their depressions, anxieties, stresses, and overall build the character that protects against these, I stumbled across a giant underground movement.

There were millions of men actually using the internet to learn about how to meet and communicate effectively to women, socially. Perhaps in part out of the natural male tendency to put on a "game face" of not needing any help, and in part due to the simple lack of detailed help for men on how to learn social skills - nearly overnight an entire industry of online men's groups were cropping up without the mainstream public even knowing.

The concerning thing to me was that there were millions of men tuning in, but not a single medical professional addressing them. Perhaps that makes sense, because my own field had in large part let men down who missed out on the normal adolescent period of building social skills. We have methods of helping depression, anxiety, general stress, relationship therapy (once you're IN one), and divorce recovery (once you're OUT of one) - but NOTHING that systematically teaches how to have the skills to identify the exact right person for you, and get INTO a relationship that's satisfying in the first place.

(By the way, online dating is a tiny recent blip on the timeline of human history, and we weren't designed biologically to be very accurate or adept at it. So we have quite a ways to go before that method of getting together approaches a practical and valid science.)

For all time past, men and women would learn how to socialize from elders who would take an active, interested, culturally guided, nurturing, supervisory role in active teaching. Courtship. Where has it gone?

For men today, if there is no mature, mentoring father around (as is the case for countless men), they "skip" a crucial step of normal masculine development, and go straight into the demands of adult life, career stresses, and the world of intellectual (not emotional or social) achievement.

So into their late twenties, thirties, forties and fifties, men were "going back," to learn by internet (and today are coming to me), what they didn't learn in their teens and early twenties. They had not mastered - and secretly, discreetly wanted to learn about - flirting, attraction, dating, and the all the absolutely necessary skills and understanding that must come before even vaguely considering such commitments as marriage.

I know, hard to believe, right? Not so much if you really open your eyes.

What I had had to learn by trial and error with no Dad around to help, these guys were trying to get systematic about.

THE SECRET, NEW "MEN'S MOVEMENT"

I went to one of their gatherings in Los Angeles to see what all the clamoring was about, and became even more concerned.Many of the newly minted men's internet entrepreneurs were calling themselves "pickup artists," and teaching men how to become just that.

At this point, I wanted nothing but to be as far away as possible from these people. It was definitely the wrong way to go in helping other men. Still, it was amazing to see how many thousands upon thousands of men were sneaking off to these secret events without telling their closest friends or family about their desire to learn what they had never learned in high school.

I lingered, looking at a crowd, when I finally met one teacher in this new men's movement who did appear to be entirely ethical. He didn't have a shred of scientific training, but was very gifted at business and marketing in particular. His teaching content was very lacking in practical advice and scientific backing, but it still had the right intentions. He wanted to help men, and I wanted to help him.

The thing about all the hurting men out there (I know that statement might still surprise you, but again, there are untold millions of them), really amounts to missing steps of maturity in the model of the "three brains" we have been looking at: the Reptilian Brained (instinctual) part of our mind, the Mammalian Brained (emotional) part, and the Higher Brained part (logic, reasoning, creativity, wisdom, boundaries, and self observation.)

Men who didn't have solid fathering during adolescence, and missed out on learning basic social skills, flirting etc, essentially missed out on getting acquainted with the workings of their own Reptilian Brain. In other words, the nonverbal, body-languaged, sexual attraction aspect of what it is to be masculine.

Of course, women with troubled adolescence or missing parents are at risk for the same gaps in their feminine development, but they have also traditionally had a wealth of media to instruct on the "how -to" of love, attraction, dating and romance. Men in droves tell me they are keenly aware of this disparity - one that is understandable in terms of the media because as we have seen: men don't go out admitting they want to learn. So they don't BUY materials from traditional media.

But they DO want to learn.

Now then, what does the male do if they "miss out" on a stage of mature development? They soldier on.

They go to higher education and work hard. They enter the work force and work hard. And some years later notice in some vague way that there is a "hole in their soul." Their masculinity is incomplete. They went on to work on emotional development of the Mammalian Brain (to learn how to make friendships with people, and manage mood), and the intellectual and moral development of the Higher Brain (to be a team player, a competent worker, and start to take ownership of one's own decisions and interpersonal boundaries.)

I knew there was a way to help, so I teamed up briefly with one of these "menswork" teachers, to help him out with some seminars. With hundreds of men in a room at each event, the greatest obstacle was overcoming the allure of the other teachers who were self-proclaimed "pickup artists" and promised to "get guys laid," so to speak. It was not very marketable thing to advertise training on how to have ethics and diplomacy with the opposite sex. Not to the male mindset. Least of all.

This would change over time.As I started to teach men, and some of these "male dating gurus" some of the emerging hardcore science-based, psychological methods of building character (which come from modern psychoanalytic thought, not homespun, kitchen table wisdom), men slowly "got it" that a "pickup artist" or "player" is just as socially ineffective an adolescent as the "wimps," "dorks," "nerds," etc, that they feared being.

I'm happy to say that in the past two years, many of the internet companies who were formerly teaching "how to be a pickup artist" or somesuch misguided service, have been instead switching to helping men work on their character (with whatever teaching resources they can find.) CHARACTER IS ATTRACTIVE TO WOMEN. Eureka.

Even in my own field of psychiatry, finding a specific method of teaching character, masculinity, and femininity has been an elusive quest to pursue, at least in a way that gives brevity, precision, and reliability. My best attempt at developing a system over the past decade plus, has been the mindOS model of psychology, some of whose features are applied in The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love.

That we need more than either gentlemanly character alone, or masculine sexual attraction skills alone, is clear.

MATURE MASCULINITY: GENTLEMEN WITH "AN EDGE"

What men have been hungry- even desperate to learn - was not simply "how to get laid," but how to be complete men. This happens to be precisely what women need men to be too. Gentlemen, with an edge; mature masculine men who are neither "player," nor "wimp," but have the solid masculine instinct, positive attitude and friendship ability, and intellectual sophistication and diplomacy of a fully developed, integrated Reptilian, Mammalian, and Higher Brain, respectively.

To feel complete, to feel fully masculine, and therefore to even want to commit to a woman for life, a man needs to have the high character in pairing the Mammalian (emotional) and Higher (intellectual) Brains, which cap and guide the core masculine instinct of the "animal side" of us underneath, in the Reptilian Brain.

I never stopped teaching men since those days I spotted "the community" of men who learn from each other online, but have now also found an opportunity to teach women alongside them - showing each other what is in the mind of the other. And that is what is in The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love - a book for both women and men. We have forgotten that for time immemorial, the courtship processes of small communities NOT wired up by internet, guided young men and women to find just the right person - in person - at the right time in their development to fully mature adults.

We cover all the questions and mysteries you could handle about all this on www.doctorpaul.net for men, and www.womenshappiness.com for women.

For nine free email lessons and homework over nine days, sign up at www.drpauldobransky.com

Let's move on to the specific questions in the blog articles to follow.

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Paul Dobransky

Dr. Paul Dobransky

The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love

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