Dear Anonymous
I deem it worthy to quote verbatim excerpts from Dr John Gray’s book titled ‘Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus’ in an effort to advise you. In the aforesaid book men are referred to as Martians whilst women are referred to as Venusians. I personally think that the contents of the aforesaid chapter ring true for quite a number of women.
A woman is like a wave. When she feels loved her self-esteem rises and falls in a wave motion. When she is feeling really good, she will reach a peak, but then suddenly her mood may change and her wave crashes down. This crash is temporary. After she reaches bottom, suddenly her mood will shift and she will again feel good about herself.
Automatically her wave begins to rise back up. When a woman’s wave rises, she feels she has an abundance of love to give, but when it falls, she feels her inner emptiness and needs to be filled up with love. This time of bottoming out is a time for emotional housecleaning. If she has suppressed any negative feelings or denied herself in order to be more loving on the upswing of her wave, then on the downswing she begins to experience these negative feelings and unfulfilled needs.
During this down time, she especially needs to talk about problems and be heard and understood. My wife, Bonnie, says this experience of “going down” is like going down into a dark well. When a woman goes into her “well”, she is consciously sinking into her unconscious self, into darkness and diffused feeling. She may suddenly experience a host of unexplained emotions and vague feelings. She may feel hopeless, thinking she is all alone or unsupported. But soon after she reaches the bottom, if she feels loved and supported, she will automatically start to feel better. As suddenly as she may have crashed, she will automatically rise up and again radiate love in her relationships. A woman’s self-esteem rises and falls like a wave. When she hits bottom, it is a time for emotional housecleaning.
A woman’s ability to give and receive love in her relationships is generally a reflection of how she is feeling about herself. When she is not feeling as good about herself, she is unable to be as accepting and appreciative of her partner. At her down times, she tends to be overwhelmed or more emotionally reactive. When her wave hits bottom, she is more vulnerable and needs more love. It is crucial that her partner understands what she needs at these times, otherwise he may make unreasonable demands.
When a man loves a woman, she begins to shine with love and fulfillment. Most men naïvely expect that shine to last forever. But to expect her loving nature to be constant is like expecting the weather never to change and the sun to shine all the time. Life is filled with rhythms - day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, spring and fall, cloudy and clear. Likewise in a relationship, men and women have their own rhythms and cycles. Men pull back and then get close, while women rise and fall in their ability to love themselves and others. In relationships, men pull back and then get close, while women rise and fall in their ability to love themselves and others.
A man assumes that her sudden change of mood is based solely on his behaviour. When she is happy, he takes credit, but when she is unhappy, he also feels responsible. He may feel extremely frustrated because he doesn’t know how to make things better. One minute she seems happy, and so he believes he is doing a good job and then the next minute she is unhappy. He is shocked because he thought he was doing so well.
This tendency to be like a wave increases when a woman is in an intimate relationship. It is essential that she feel safe to go through this cycle. Otherwise, she works hard at pretending that everything is always all right and suppresses her negative feelings. When a woman doesn’t feel safe to go into her well, her only alternative is to avoid intimacy and sex or to suppress and numb her feelings through addictions like drinking, overeating, overworking, or over caretaking.
Even with her addictions, however, she periodically will fall into her well and her feelings may come up in a most uncontrolled fashion. You probably know stories of couples who never fight or argue and then suddenly to everyone’s surprise they decide to get a divorce. In many of these cases, the woman has suppressed her negative feelings to avoid having fights. As a result, she becomes numb and unable to feel her love. When negative feelings are suppressed, positive feelings become suppressed as well, and love dies.
Avoiding arguments and fights certainly is healthy but not by suppressing feelings.
When a woman’s wave crashes, it is a time of emotional cleansing or emotional housecleaning. Without this cleansing or emotional catharsis, a woman slowly loses her ability to love and to grow in love. Through controlled repression of her feelings, her wave nature is obstructed, and she gradually becomes unfeeling and passionless over time. Some women who avoid dealing with their negative emotions and resist the natural wave motion of their feelings experience premenstrual syndrome (PMS).
There is a strong correlation between PMS and the inability to cope with negative feelings in a positive way. In some cases, women who have learned successfully to deal with their feelings have felt their PMS symptoms disappear. Even a strong, confident, and successful woman will need to visit her well from time to time. Men commonly make the mistake of thinking that if their female partner is successful in the work world then she will not experience these times of emotional housecleaning.
The opposite is true. When a woman is in the work world, she generally is exposed to stress and emotional pollution.
Her need for emotional housecleaning becomes great. Similarly, a man’s need to pull away like a rubber band may increase when he is under a greater amount of stress at work.
One study revealed that a woman’s self-esteem generally rises and falls in a cycle between 21 and 35 days. No studies have been done on how often a man pulls back like a rubber band, but my experience is that it is about the same. A woman’s self-esteem cycle is not necessarily in sync with her menstrual cycle, but it does average out at 28 days. When a woman puts on her business suit, she can detach from this emotional roller coaster, but when she returns home, she needs her partner to give the tender loving support that every woman needs and appreciates at these times. It is important to recognise that this tendency to go into the well does not necessarily affect a woman’s competence at work, but it does greatly influence her communication with the people she intimately loves and needs.
I remember reading this quote in an article: “A wealthy woman can only get empathy from a wealthy psychiatrist.” When a woman has a lot of money, people (and especially her husband) do not give her the right to be upset. She has no permission to be like a wave and crash from time to time. She has no permission to explore her feelings or to need more in any area of her life. A woman with money is expected to be fulfilled all the time because her life could be so much worse without this financial abundance. This expectation is not only impractical but disrespectful. Regardless of wealth, status, privilege, or circumstances, a woman needs permission to be upset and allow her wave to crash.
How a Man Can Support a Woman in the Well
A wise man learns to go out of his way to help a woman feel safe to rise and fall. He releases his judgments and demands and learns how to give the required support. As a result, he enjoys a relationship that increases in love and passion over the years. He may have to weather a few emotional storms or droughts, but the reward is much greater. The uninitiated man still suffers from storms and droughts, but because he does not know the art of loving her through her time in the well, their love stops growing and gradually becomes repressed.
If a woman is not supported in being unhappy sometimes then she can never truly be happy. To be genuinely happy requires dipping down into the well to release, heal, and purify the emotions.
This is a natural and healthy process. If we are to feel the positive feelings of love, happiness, trust, and gratitude, we periodically also have to feel anger, sadness, fear, and sorrow. When a woman goes down into her well, it is when she can heal these negative emotions. Men also need to process their negative feelings so that they can then experience their positive feelings. When a man goes into his cave, it is a time when he silently feels and processes his negative feelings.
When a woman is on the upswing, she can be fulfilled with what she has. But on the downswing, she then will become aware of what she is missing. When she is feeling good, she is capable of seeing and responding to the good things in her life. But when she is crashing, her loving vision becomes cloudy, and she reacts more to what is missing in her life. Just as a glass of water can be viewed as half full or half empty, when a woman is on her way up, she sees the fullness of her life.
On the way down she sees the emptiness. Whatever emptiness she overlooks on the way up comes more into focus when she is on her way down into her well. Without learning about how women are like waves, men cannot understand or support their wives. They are confused when things get a lot better on the outside but worse in the relationship. By remembering this difference, a man holds the key to giving his partner the love she deserves when she needs it the most.
• Gaone Monau is an attorney and motivational speaker on the areas of confidence building, stress management, relationships, self-discovery and gender-based violence. For bookings, motivational talks, questions or comments on the aforesaid areas contact +26774542732 or [email protected]. Her Facebook page is Be Motivated with Gaone.
