by Jeff Mac
It's impersonal. It sounds like that question that interviewers ask: “What do you feel is your greatest weakness?” By that I mean that it feels like it's not for him specifically, but one that you saw in a movie one time and decided that you would throw it at him. At best, it feels like it's a part of some “relationship checklist” that you put all men through. At worst, it feels like a trap.
It's probably dishonest. You likely already know that this is not the real question. But for whatever reason, you're going to put your man through this unfair question, rather than ask whatever it is right away.
What's funny to me about this is that the women who ask this question can probably tell you about fifty clearer ways to ask it: “So what if I asked him where he thought the relationship was going? All I wanted to know was if he was happy with the way things were going, and if he thought it was time to become exclusive!”
Uh… so ask him that stuff. You know, instead of that dopey question that you read in a magazine one time. If you go “fishing” with one of these lousy, vague questions, well, you never know what's going to show up on the end of your line. It will not likely be the delicious sea bass of clear communication. You're probably going to get the muddy, old, abandoned boot of relationship tension.
Which brings us to the third thing that you need to know about having The Talk:
You'll Need to Disarm His Initial Reaction to
The Talk, or “Don't Move, or the Relationship
Gets It, See?!”
You might have noticed that I used the word “disarm” in the title of this section. (If you didn't, don't worry, you can just go back and notice it now. There.) That wasn't by accident. When you say, “We need to talk…” his first thought will be that you're now in a form of hostage standoff.
You know what I'm talking about—in a movie when two parties are standing face-to-face, each of them holding a hostage at gunpoint. There are snipers everywhere with their sights trained on everybody involved, and almost nobody is relaxed and/or watching the end of the game that's on right now.
I know it sounds like an extreme reaction, but that's a lot like what we're thinking. Men learn that they are going to have The Talk, and their thoughts immediately go to, “What is the quickest way I can end this situation without trouble?” What you are going to have to do is to teach him that The Talk isn't about ending it quickly. It's about resolving it so that everybody is closer to the truth than they were at the beginning of The Talk.
This is going to be challenging since as soon as The Talk begins, we're back to the “problem-solver” mode. As far as he knew, all was well; now there's this Talk, and it's his job to poke the problem to death to get back to that part where all is well again.
Now, I'm not really going to tell you how to help him avoid this hostage-situation feeling. Unfortunately, it's probably just going to happen a little. At least the first few times you have The Talk. What I'm going to teach you to do is how to disarm it, so you can actually get to The Talk itself.
To do that, we're going to go through what you would do in one of those hostage situations in the movies:
Do Not Ambush Him: First thing is you don't want to give him any reason to think that this is a trap that you have set up for him to walk into. Don't invite him over for dinner and then tell him that you did so in order to talk about XYZ. If you do that, you're just going to reinforce in him that there's something really scary about to happen here, that you're holding a gun to the head of your relationship, and it's up to him to answer you correctly—or else it's all over.
Plus, you're now telling him that he can't trust you. You've obviously been thinking about this but not telling him until you set up this situation just so. Makes him nervous. Makes him wonder how big a deal this must be that you felt you needed to do all of this behind his back.
Much better to just bring this stuff up as it happens. And it doesn't have to be a formal “The Talk… shall now begin,” either. Remember, it's you who wants to have this talk. So you might do well to acknowledge that right off the bat, even with a roll of the eyes. “Look, I know this is so stereotypical, the woman needs to have The Talk with the man. But, well, I do. So here we go.” You're not apologizing for it. You're just admitting that this is your thing and that you don't expect him to be comfortable with the whole thing.
Let Him Know You've Called Off the Snipers: This is the part of the movie where one party drops his gun, holds out his hands and says, “Whoa, whoa, everything's cool. We're all fine here. Nobody's pointing a gun at you, okay? Everybody, lower your weapons.” How to do it? Let him know you're not going to hold what he says against him.
He's pretty sure that you're going to be hanging on his every word and that he will be held to it. The stereotype here is that when the man says the wrong thing, the woman holds it against him for the rest of their lives. And possibly beyond, if you're into the whole afterlife thing.
When you're asking him to talk about the relationship, he's never, never going to be able to do it if he feels like he's being recorded and graded on his first try. Remember, he's not good at translating his feelings into words, okay? He's going to struggle with it some. If you want him to do it anyway, well, you're going to have to cut him some slack. Let him know that you're not going to hold it against him if he fumbles around with it a little. Which brings us to the next one:
Actually Call Off the Snipers: Yeah, see, it's not enough to just tell him that he's safe, and then as soon as he makes a false move, you blow his brains out. I guess that would work. But like in a hostage movie, it'll only work one time. After that, you can forget all about trust.
The more you can get it into your mind that his words aren't his feelings, the easier this will be. And the less you hold against him here, the easier it will be for him to talk the next time.
Don't BS Him: As we said before, he needs you to be direct and clear. If you're not, he can't relax. Just like a dog. When is a dog most likely going to bite you? When he's not sure where you're at. If you are pretending to feel one way but in fact you feel another way, he can tell. And it makes him nervous.
This reminds me of another example from the website. A woman wrote to me about a man who had vanished soon after the resolution of a pregnancy scare they'd had as a result of a “wardrobe malfunction” in the act. Always a scary one, right? These two had been dating for a very short time, and all of a sudden they were facing a moment that had the potential to alter literally every second of their lives, forever.
She told me something along the lines of, “I was good. I didn't freak out or anything.” She told him, very calmly, that he shouldn't worry about it, that she would take care of it. Stuff was never the same between them.
My manslation of his disappearance was that her reaction made him feel like he couldn't trust her. She was freaked out, but she made sure not to act freaked out. And so what could he take away from that but, “I'm not sure what's really going on with her. All I know is that whatever happened, she was pretending that this potentially universe-altering moment was No Biggie. Uh… I gotta go.”
I know she thought she was making things better by being calm. But here's a situation in which going 100 percent ape-crap might have been more appropriate. Not because ape-crap is better than calm. Because honest is better than not. If he couldn't tell the difference, pretending to be calm might have been great. But we usually can tell.
A Few Words on Crying
You know. Ladies, you know. You know that this is your trump card. You know that this is the one thing that will get you out of any jam with a dude. So don't use it.
I am not saying that you shouldn't cry. During the course of The Talk, hey, it comes up. If that's how you're feeling, it's how you're feeling. Honest is always good here, as I've said. What I'm saying is that you shouldn't use crying. Not because it won't work. It probably will. But it will also guarantee that The Talk is over.
See, we see you crying over there, and we think, “We made her do th
at. We are a big, fat jerk. We need to do or say whatever it takes to get that to stop us from being said jerk.” Remember, for us, crying means either (a) a lead safe just landed on our foot, or (b) Darth Vader just told us he's our father.
But if you use this to get him to do stuff, ah, he'll catch on. And when he does, he's going to ignore your emotions from that day forward. The Talk should be about bringing the two of you closer together, not one of you tricking the other one into doing stuff.
BIG TALK LIGHTNING ROUND
In this section, I'll take some of the trickier examples that I've heard about, point out the danger zones, and offer some suggestions for your best route through.
When to Reveal the “Bad Stuff”
A lot of women who have written to me have asked about this one. How soon is too soon to tell him all the terrible, horrible things about you (I'm assuming stuff like diseases, murder convictions, and dog-fighting rings by the way they're talking about it), and how is the best way to bring it up?
Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that, with the right guy, it sort of doesn't matter. However you can get yourself through this stuff, the right guy is the one who is going to react just fine regardless of the timing or words you use. A good relationship deals with what comes through and turns it into just more good relationship.
The bad news is that, of course, there are plenty of guys you'll feel you have to tell “just right.” These are what I like to call the “wrong guys for you.” Look, whatever horrible stuff you've done (and I'm just sure it's terrible), you already did it, right? It's a part of your life. So, ah, ain't nothing you can do about it anyway.
The real answer is “when you feel like you can bring yourself tell him about it.” Might you be wrong about that timing? Sure, but only with the wrong guy. The right one will have to be able to hack it even at the “wrong” time, or else he wouldn't be much of a right guy, would he?
I've had my share of “bad stuff” revealed to me in my time, and almost invariably, my reaction was that it wasn't as bad as she thought it was. Even when it was pretty bad stuff, it certainly didn't change how I felt about her. Really. Even when I didn't like her that much, now that I think about it.
I know you're still going to worry about this. And that's fine. I mean, it's going to happen, so whatever. What's important for you to know is that likely he will not be nearly as freaked out as you are. Remember, we don't think in terms of “meaning” in the same way that you do. We think in terms of “function.” So if you did something lousy years back, what he's not thinking is, “That means that she's a monster!” It's more like, “Huh. So… so I do nothing about that, right? This is just stuff that happened, yeah? Okay. Cool.”
Saying “I Love You”
This is a tough one for everybody. Nobody's ever sure when to say it, and if you blow the timing, everybody's pretty sure they're in for some weapons-grade awkwardness.
Here's what you need to know about how a man hears “I love you.” Obviously, it depends on how he feels about you. If he loves you back, his initial reaction is probably major, pants-pooping relief. “Whew! She loves me, too!” He'll probably say it back right then. Yea, everybody's happy.
But what happens if he doesn't love you back? Well, it's important to know that, just like with the crying, he's going to be launched into “problem-solver” mode.
The Problem: I've got a woman who just put herself way, way out on a limb by telling me she loves me, and I'm standing here, saying nothing.
The Solution: Panic. He might say anything here. If he senses that you desperately need him to tell you he loves you back, he might say it, even if he doesn't feel it. Uh… I've heard. I read that somewhere. About a very… bad man. Sigh. What do you want from me? It happens, okay?
The key with “I love you” is, I think, that it can never be unsaid. My personal policy is that the way to know when to say this for the first time is that you can't possibly hold it in for one second longer. And only because you want to say it—never just because you need him to say it. If you say “I love you” only to hear it back, oh, you might very well hear it back. But it will only be because he's trying to solve your problem for you. Not because he feels it.
Little Stuff He's Screwing Up
These are your “dirty socks on the floor,” your “never does the dishes,” your “do I really have to ask him eleven times to mow the lawn?” He was supposed to do something, usually chore-like, and he's not doing it, and how can you get him to do it?
First, you should know that many men will try to “get around” actually solving these problems. We all know the issue:
She hates it when I come home late. Let me see. How can I come in late more quietly?
or
Okay, she doesn't like when I hang out with these specific friends. So…when I do that anyway, how can I make sure she never finds out about it?
This is just the way we do. Sorry about that, everyone. However, there occasionally comes a time when we know that it is actually far more annoying to sneak around the problem than to just fix it once and for all.
And by that I mean that we intend to fix it in a way that is not at all once and for all, but that we hope will do for the time being. Ergo…
Hmm. I have got to fix that toilet that keeps running. Now, I know that I could fix it for good if I were to replace this part. And all I would have to do would be to go to the hardware store, find a replacement part, drain the tank…okay, hold on. What if I took this garbage-bag twist tie and some gum…
But then sometimes we actually have to fix the problem for real. It's so unfamiliar to some of us that we almost don't know where to start. But once we get in there… well, we're going to really make a mess.*
So how are you going to move past all of this nonsense as quickly as possible? I heard a great illustration of a good way to approach this. A couple we know had this conversation. She let him know he hadn't done whatever stupid little thing it was, and he said, “Uh-oh. Am I in trouble?” And she looked at him like he was nuts and said, “Who in the world would you be ‘in trouble’ with?”
He expected to be trapped in this mommy/little boy relationship that we see on TV all day long, in which the woman scolds the man, and the man, chastened, goes off and does his chores. The problem here is not that it won't work on one level—you'll probably get those dishes done with scolding. But when he hears you talk to him that way, then he starts to behave that way, too.
Basically, if you treat him like he's a little boy you have to scold to keep in line, well, why would you think he'd behave otherwise? And if you treat him like a man, same thing.
The key with this stuff is to refuse to go with the scolding-mommy dynamic. It's seductive, especially for actual moms who are dealing with actual little kids. But that's the thing—if you have kids who you are trying to keep in line, ah, he's not one of them. So if he's behaving like one of them, that's the problem:
“Come on. I'd expect this from the kids—they're twelve, they don't shower, they're little morons. You're on my team, right? I really need you to help me figure out how to keep this place functional, without running out the door and going on a tri-state killing spree, okay?”
That's not nagging. Nagging is when you misrepresent the relationship as the Wicked Stepmom vs. Dennis the Menace. This is saying, “Hey, we're both adults, we're a unit, we're together. Help me out and meet me halfway on this, okay?”
And the very best way to approach this? Completely coldly, before he's even screwed it up. Definitely before you're furious. Have a sit-down to come up with all of the chores, who does them, how often, etc. Make sure everybody agrees to what they're supposed to do. Let him know that you're not going to just forget about this, but you're really going to do it and stick to your half. Then, if he “forgets” (and, er, he might), you've got his own agreement to work with:
“Come on. We don't need to talk about this. We agreed that every other week it was your turn to clean out the wa
lrus cage. Get out there. It looks like Gustavus was sick this week.”
Warning: Do not exchange sexual favors for chores. Ever. Ever. Why? Not because it won't work. Don't do it because it will work. And then you're a hooker who gets paid in chores. Which, I mean, if that's your thing, knock yourself out.
Escalation, or Are We Exclusive/Moving In/
Getting Married?
These are The Talks that men seem to be least likely to initiate. I'm not 100 percent sure why. I just think that we don't always think in these terms. A lot of men have some idea that they are attempting to stave off “domestication” and escalating the relationship can seem to be at odds with that.
That's the advice here. Don't make it about adding new restrictions. In the example of becoming exclusive, you're not saying, “Listen, I want you to be unable to see other people.” I mean, you don't want that because you have some weird desire to deny him other women. You want that because you want to be closer to him, and the way you get there is to be the only person in the other one's life.