Manslations (17 page)

Actually, we can stop there, because that last one is going to be his answer for any further questions you have. You'll walk away thinking, “For the love of all that is holy, didn't you ask
anything
?” And he'll walk away thinking, “What the hell? I told her what happened! They got engaged!”

In his mind, he got all the necessary information. They. Got. Engaged. That's the important data, right there. Isn't it?

What you're going to have to realize is that what's important for you to talk about, he might not even know exists. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist—even stuff
in
him (i.e., feelings about the relationship, etc.), but it might mean that he's never, never going to just talk about that stuff. Wouldn't occur to him. You're going to have to prompt for that stuff directly.

Here's an example. If you were to ask a man, “How do you feel like our relationship is going?” I'd bet you a thousand bucks he'd say, “Uh, fine. It's great.”

Does that mean that he thinks the relationship is going “fine” or “great”? Who knows? He sure doesn't. But what he heard was, “Do you have any major problems to report?” and his answer was, “Nope. No major disturbances, ma'am.”

Now, if you prompted him with something specific like, “I want to talk about how things have been going since you moved in. Seems like you've been really distant, and I just wanted to see what was going on,” well… okay, he'll still freak a little, of course. But at least he'll know why. Which is nice.

And if you've ever gone clothes shopping with a man, you know what I'm talking about. Most men don't, say, stroll around a clothing store just to see what's in there. We can't do it. When we need to go to a clothing store (i.e., when all of our clothes look like someone was shipwrecked in them or the Incredible Hulk just transformed back into Bruce Banner or something), we go there with one primary goal—leaving. Quickly. We'd leave the store before we even got there if we could, but we need those spill-proof khakis (or whatever). We go there; we identify what we need; we grab it, pay for it, and get out.

How does this help you when you want to talk to your man? Well, it will help you to get your point across if you can

Be Clear: Actually identify what you're talking about. I know some women are allergic to this, but if'n you don't tell him, see, he won't know.


Be Direct: Get to the issue at hand right away. If you tiptoe around it, not only will he not know what you're talking about, but he'll start dreading how bad it's going to be since you're doing all that tiptoeing. He'll lock down into crisis management mode, also known as “holy crap, what's happening, am I in trouble” mode. Bad mode for talking.

To illustrate how to do these things, I'll use an example of what
not
to do. Here's one of the things that women ask their men that they should never, never, never ask him:

Where do you see this relationship going?

A woman wrote me, furious that she just asked that one little question—and all of a sudden her man pulled way back, and he couldn't even give her a straight answer. You know, as if
he
was the one having a hard time being direct.

Even as I type that question, I have no earthly idea what she's asking him. What are the possible “destinations” for a relationship to be going? As far as I can tell, there's only “getting married” or “one of us dumping the other one.” Those are the two places that a relationship goes. (Or maybe “a loud argument,” if we're talking about the next couple of minutes.)

So as far as he knows, that's what she asked him: “Are we getting married, or are we breaking up?
Now?
” And unless he's wildly excited about one of those two options happening in the next couple of minutes, he's pretty sure he's screwed.

This is just a bad question. It has no value in the real world. Why?

It's completely unclear. He probably knows on some level that you're not asking him, “Are we getting married or breaking up, and right now?!” but he has no idea what you are asking. All this does is send him running for cover as he tries to figure out what he can say to keep you off his back until he knows what's going on.


It's indirect. Clearly there's something you want to ask him. But you don't want to have to come right out and ask it. So you ask this “pretend” question— as if you're just casually wondering this. This is one of those situations where you would do far better if you came up with an actual question and asked it.


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 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.

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 that. 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.