Unhidden

by Robert Kandell

  The Chasm between a Man’s EQ and a Woman’s EQ

  Michael Beldoch coined the term Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in a 1964 paper. Keith Beasley later used EQ in 1987 in an article for British Mensa. However, both terms became more widely known when Daniel Goleman wrote his book on the topic in 1995. Since then, there has been a wide debate in the scientific community on the significance of EQ, especially in comparison to the importance of IQ.

  From my experience as an educator and coach of both men and women, while IQ is important, it is the rare man who is connected to his emotions who tends to attract women for long-term and intimate relationships. Society’s encouragement of girls to feel their feelings in comparison to the browbeating of boys to man up and stop being a baby has led to a widening chasm between the genders’ relationship to their EQ. For men, being connected to their emotions is a double-edged sword. On one side, they will non-confront their emotional state and on the other they will cover it with any number of random emotions, including disconnection.

  On the other side of the sword, we find men's lack of patience with the wide range of a woman’s emotional state. Because men will not face their own feelings, they will avoid, diminish, gaslight, or punish a woman who displays hers. This will lead men to attract women who will subjugate their own feelings to remain in the relationship and/or who will seek out other avenues of expression for those feelings. Women complain to me that they commonly hear statements such as these from men:

  I have no idea what you’re so upset about.

  You’re totally off your rocker! Is it that time of the month again?

  What? Again? Didn’t we talk about this yesterday?

  When a man communicates to a woman that her feelings or emotional states are too much, he is diminishing her in order to avoid his own discomfort around her feelings. This habit reinforces her social programming that she is too much. This validation encourages women to minimize themselves to fit in with the guy, so she shows him only a small portion of who she is out of fear of abandonment or rejection. By choosing this course of action, she never pushes him out of his comfort zone, thus bypassing an opportunity for him to grow and get better at handling her emotions. We end up with women acting small and unchallenged men living inside their status quo having mediocre relationships. In order to be fully in a relationship with a modern woman, you need to do the work to expand not only your capacity to hold the woman’s emotional state, but also to become curious about its attributes.

  I am enthralled by Morgan’s varying emotional state. While some of it gets challenging to handle at times (I am human after all), I am usually very honored that she feels safe to express them to me. Women are also taught to push down their feelings because, as previously discussed, they do not want to be labeled as emotional or called a crazy bitch. If you can be a man who is able to show genuine interest in a woman’s evolving state, your relationship will take a major leap forward.

  I have watched Morgan parent her two young girls for several years now. She practices a technique called Hand-in-Hand Parenting, which teaches parents to encourage their children to experience the full range of their feelings. In contrast to my upbringing, which often included time-outs and statements such as “stop crying, it’s not that bad,” this technique allows the child to fully feel her emotions until they run flat. I have witnessed Morgan holding her elder daughter for an hour while she cries, yells, and says some unpleasant things. However, in the end, when the tears have stopped, I watch as her daughter reveals the true hurt that was bothering her. It was not that she couldn’t have the ice cream but that her bestie ditched her on the playground. Morgan’s patience, along with this amazing technique, is creating an emotionally aware and mature young girl who I suspect will avoid some of the same emotional traps that my peers and I have encountered later in life.

  To be engaged with a modern woman, I highly recommend using a grown-up version of this approach with your partner. As much as possible, hold a space where she can fully express all the hurts living inside her. Be willing to be that safe place, one that she has never encountered before, that approves, loves, and encourages her to be all of herself, not just the convenient (to men) side. If you don’t, the true hurts that are underneath the rage probably won’t be given air time, and the fallout can plague your relationship.

  Being the Villain

  In any of life’s circumstances, you have a choice about how much responsibility you wish to take. At one end, you can take no responsibility. I call this playing the victim. On the other end, you can take 100 percent responsibility and be what I like to call being the villain. People often ask me why it's a villain and not a hero. I’ve extrapolated from the theory that the villain is always the one to start the game. Imagine the life of the Batman without the joker. What would he be doing? He’d be driving around Gotham in his batmobile, getting In-N-Out burgers, and looking for something to do. Without the Joker creating some kind of chaos, he would have no role. So in terms of responsibility, the villain starts the game and the hero responds.

  To truly live unHIDDEN, you must take 100 percent responsibility for your life. If a random stranger comes up behind you and hits you on the head, I appreciate that it is close to impossible to take 100 percent responsibility for that. It is easy to apply this viewpoint to the other 99.99 percent of experiences in your life, however. At first, this may seem challenging or even impossible.

  What about the way my father treated me?

  How can I be responsible for the way my boss disrespects me?

  I didn’t ask for these genes; they were given to me.

  I believe that the most empowered way to live is to not to blame or suffer due to your life’s circumstances, but use the power of them (like a judo move) to help you achieve your goals. My viewpoint I live by is this: It’s not the circumstance, it’s you.

  When I make mistakes, I make amends and fix them. If there is someone I want to be closer to, I tell them. If I have a desire, I speak it out loud, for example, to Morgan. I am not responsible for others’ reactions or their feelings, just the deliberateness of my communication. Although I have lost friends during this process who I believe only wanted to see a portion of me, I do know the ones who are left are precious.

  Start here. We often view responsibility as a zero-sum game, which is a commonly used term in game theory. By definition, “each participant's gain or loss of utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the utility of the other participants.” In other words, if your partner takes five slices of pizza worth of responsibility, it leaves you just three. My viewpoint is that each person can take full responsibility for co-creating the situation. I can see and admit my part for every situation while Morgan and can claim hers. In this action, we are able to move through challenging situations deeply connected.

  To the unHIDDEN man, you can even look at places that seem impossible to take any responsibility. Let’s go back to the situation where a random stranger hit you from behind. Is it possible to see that perhaps being in that neighborhood at that time provoked the attack? Is it possible to imagine how you co-created it?

  10

  YOUR MASCULINE/FEMININE RATIO

  Be a Man

  I was born a boy and have spent my entire life identified as one and have been happily identified with my gender. In terms of modern terminology, I am called a cis-gendered male. The term cis, coined in a 1995 article by German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch, means that you identify with the gender you were born with. However, for a boy growing up in the 1970s, showing any non-masculine tendencies was a dangerous proposition.

  Don’t be a pussy

  You little girl

  You throw like a woman

  You little bitch …

  The powerful documentary The Mask you Live In describes it best. It is not safe for a young boy to show the extent of his emotions. As he moves through his childhood, he has to push down his anger, his fear, and his loneliness and be a man. The film starts off wit
h the hypothesis that the sublimation of these feelings is the cause of the violence that is far too common in our world.

  The second worst thing was to be was homosexual. We received intense messages from the media that homosexual men were either effeminate/weak or leather-wearing/muscle bound thugs who would rape you. There were no positive role models. Like being perceived as girly, being accused of being gay could lead to ridicule, ostracization, or even physical harm.

  Fag!

  Don’t be queer

  That’s so gay

  The common link between these two insults should be obvious. As a boy, it was paramount to maintain my hyper masculinity and avoid anything that would be considered feminine. My challenge was this: I was raised by two people who had very different concepts about how to raise me. My mother was teaching me to have empathy and awareness and to understand emotions, while my father had less tolerance for this part of myself. While I was closer growing up to my mother, there was still an unconscious allegiance to be like my father. Throw in the peer pressure, and I was one confused young man. My confusion around my masculine/feminine ratio made things particularly confusing in high school. My female classmates felt the availability of my feminine side and cast me more in the friend role rather than the boyfriend role. They were more interested in telling me their secrets than kissing me. I wanted to be something else but couldn’t act like the more masculine boys because I felt neither authentic or comfortable doing so.

  Basic Definitions

  There are many different schools of thoughts around the meaning of masculine and feminine. The Oxford Dictionary connects masculine with attributes normally associated with men (strength, robust, strong, and physically large) while feminine is more female (soft, delicacy, prettiness). In terms of comparison, society considers being masculine as being superior. While I understand these definitions, they have always felt limiting to me because they didn’t make sense for my own experience. I have always been tall, strong, and physically active, but have had many internal ideas and concepts that were soft, delicate, and empathetic. In my mind, I didn’t know how to rectify this split.

  The second distinction describes the masculine presence as one of projecting, whereas the feminine presence is associated with reception. When I felt masculine, I was creating, producing, or just enjoying my deep work ethic. I loved a hard day’s work either hauling wood at my construction job one high school summer or figuring out the most efficient way to shelve books in my job at my college library. I loved all aspects of the production. I could also identify when I was in my feminine while listening to a friend’s trouble or fully ingesting reading poetry.

  The masculine likes to create order out of chaos. It likes making checklists to cross off our accomplishments, noticing moving towards goals, and having clean, orderly workspaces. The feminine is the opposite, enjoying multiple cycles open, new possibilities, and always the next thing on the horizon to look forward to. It likes menus and wants order to be constantly shaken up to create new options. In fact, if their space starts to get too orderly, they’ll shake things up until it gets messy again. This is just the nature of things. The marriage of the masculine and feminine creates life. It is the balance between control and chaos and stability and expansion. It's easy to beat up the parts you’re not comfortable with in yourself or your intimate friends.

  My favorite example of this dichotomy involves a masculine man and a feminine woman traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

  The man, assuming he was the one to organize the trip, would say to his lady, “We’re going take the 580 east and hook up to highway 5. Then we’ll travel 383 miles south, stopping midway at Kettleman City where we can refuel and grab a burger at In-N-Out. It will take approximately six hours with bio breaks and other assorted issues. K?”

  Barely breaking stride, he heads off to finish packing up their car. Smiling, the woman counters innocently, “That’s great, honey. Can we stop at this little tea shop in Moss Beach on the way?”

  The man stops moving and turns to face her “Um … ” His masculinity inflects his voice with a deep timbre, covering his slight angst at being questioned. “Moss Beach is on the coast. For us to get there, we’re going to have to travel from San Francisco down Highway 101 to Highway 1. Then there’s this cutoff at the 152, but that’s going to add an incredible amount of time to our trip and it’s not very efficient.”

  She nods and smiles again, “I think it’s a good plan you have, but it’s also a really boring drive. Let’s make this into an adventure and see something new. We aren’t in any rush to get to LA.”

  He tries to come up with a reasonable response. “But I thought you hated driving and wanted to get there as soon as possible?”

  She smiles again. “I do and I appreciate you trying to take care of me. But I really want to see the magnificent Pacific Ocean and have an experience. Are you in?”

  His insides flare with turmoil. “This is just so inefficient,” he says to himself. But when he sees her glowing eyes, he softens and says, “Well, I have driven that normal route about a dozen times and this new way could be an adventure.”

  People who identify as feminine will walk into an ordered situation and feel the itchy sense of being imprisoned. People who identify with being masculine will walk through chaotic situations and start to shut down. They might use force to slow down the motion so they can feel comfortable. It's the love and empathy and understanding of your opposite poles that create mastery. The ability to embrace, understand, and master the other pole can significantly create power where there was none.

  Everyone has a ratio of masculine and feminine inside. If you think you’re 100 percent masculine and don’t have a feminine side, I would debate that you actually do, but it may be repressed. In the years since high school, I’ve fully embraced my feminine side, which has ultimately made me a better person, lover, husband, and coach. My experience tells me that those men who do not embrace their feminine aspect are missing out on a superpower. You have the innate ability to choose which energy you want to bring forth, and when, if you wish. Like everything else, it requires practice. If you’re able to move inside a situation based on an instinct rather than a script, you can bring out the best parts of yourself.

  David Deida, in his landmark book, The Way of the Superior Man, states that “the nature of nature is polarity, from the magnetism that flows between the North and South Poles of the Earth, to the attraction that flows between your masculine core and the feminine radiance of a woman.” It is the difference between your and your partner’s masculine and feminine that creates charge. So when we have a feminine woman and a feminine man, there tends not to be much electricity between them. Emotional intimacy yes, sexuality no. The ability to understand these two poles and how to create polarity is the pathway for deeper sexuality and relating.

  11

  WHAT WOMEN WANT

  Women Want You to Choose to Understand Them

  How would you respond to the question: “What do women truly want?”

  Men have faced this conundrum for all time. Responses tend to fall somewhere on the spectrum between “Jeez, why bother, I’ll never get it” and “I am dogmatically curious about this question and, for the love of god, I’m going to figure it out”—with all the infinite shades of gray in-between.

  I have found most men fall under the Jeez end of the spectrum, having been educated through media, their friends, and their own experience to believe that women are nonlinear, unpredictable, emotional beings who are impossible to figure out. At best, they attempt to avoid potentially challenging situations where they will need to focus their attention to move through an argument. They equate interacting with women to the most challenging video game they have ever played.

  On the other side, there are men who genuinely are curious about women. They want so deeply to find love and they are willing to put the time and energy into understanding women. As an inexperienced ex-fat kid with an engineer’s mind, I w
as in this camp. When I had my worst moment of my life (see the introduction), I could have stood up and stormed out in an ego-based tantrum. I luckily chose curiosity, which has led me to the most amazing life I could have ever imagined. However, the initial years of my journey were rocky. After we opened Pandora’s box, Carol and I had more intense, screaming, and yelling arguments in the first three months of doing workshops together than during our first five years together. We were constantly hitting each other's tender buttons, causing some very difficult and painful conversations. However, even in our worst moments, I knew there was a way I could learn how to relate to this powerful woman. In reality, I was getting to know her for the first time.

  My current relationship with Morgan is beyond what I thought was possible. While we still have our share of heated discussions, they tend to end quickly. We have created a safe space where each of us can reveal parts of ourselves that were always hidden. We allow each other the wide gamut of our emotions and stay present with each other through them. We are allies always and endeavor to practice collaborative communication even at the worst of times. It’s not always easy but so much better than when I started my practice.