Million Dollar RelationshipsWhat commitment really looks like — and how much is your relationship worth?
At regular intervals in every healthy relationship, one person is going to need to ask the other for something.
A little more affection.
More help around the house.
More time together.
More reliability.
More sex.
Less criticism.
A phone call when you’re running late.
Having needs does not make you needy.
And loving someone does not mean magically knowing everything they need without being told.
But it does mean caring enough to become curious about their inner world.
Over time, we should get better at knowing the person we love. We begin to recognise what delights them, what hurts them, what makes them feel safe, what makes them feel cherished, and what causes them to quietly withdraw.
That is part of empathy.
But empathy is not mind-reading. The person with the need still has some responsibility for expressing it clearly.
So ideally, it works something like this:
I tell you what matters to me.
You care enough to listen.
And together we work out what is possible.
Sometimes the answer will simply be, “Of course.”
Sometimes it will be, “I can’t quite do that, but how about this?”
That is relationship.
That is negotiation.
That is win–win.
The trouble begins when someone asks for something reasonable and repeatedly gets ignored, dismissed or resisted.
At first, they may simply ask again.
Then perhaps they decide to grin and bear it.
But unmet needs have a habit of hanging around.
Eventually the irritation starts leaking out sideways — as sarcasm, nagging, withdrawal, criticism, manipulation or resentment.
Now everybody is behaving badly, and the original issue can disappear beneath a pile of secondary problems.
Which is why it is so much easier to deal with the need when it first appears.
Both people have responsibilities here.
The person asking needs to make the request as clearly and respectfully as possible.
The person receiving it needs to listen seriously and either respond — or renegotiate.
And then comes the surprisingly difficult part.
Actually doing what you said you would do.
The Million Dollar TestImagine that a slightly eccentric fairy godmother appears and says:
“I will give you one million dollars if, for the next month, you remember to do this one thing your partner has asked of you.”
Would you remember?
Most people laugh rather sheepishly at this point and admit that, yes, somehow they probably would.
They would put an alarm on their phone.
Write a note on the fridge.
Tie a ribbon around the dog.
Tattoo it temporarily on their forehead.
Whatever worked.
The point is not that forgetting always means you don’t care. Human beings forget things for all sorts of reasons. We get distracted. We are stressed. Some people have genuine difficulties with memory or executive function.
The more useful question is:
Once you know something matters deeply to the person you love, what are you willing to do to help yourself remember?
Because that is where commitment becomes visible.
Not in grand declarations.
In behaviour.
If your job depended on remembering something, you would probably create a system.
If you had a flight at 6 a.m., you would set an alarm.
If you had tickets to a concert you had waited six months to see, you would probably remember the date.
We create structures around the things we consider important.
Relationships deserve structures too.
So How Do I Remember?You do whatever genuinely works.
Put a reminder in your phone.
Leave yourself a note.
Add it to your calendar.
Create a shared ritual.
Link the new behaviour to something you already do every day.
Visualise yourself doing it.
Ask your partner to remind you without turning the reminder into a fight.
And if you forget, own it, repair it and try again.
You are not trying to achieve perfection.
You are demonstrating priority.
Every time you follow through on something that matters to your partner, you make a small deposit into what I think of as the Relationship Savings Account.
A kept promise.
A thoughtful gesture.
An apology that actually changes something.
A request remembered.
A difficult conversation handled well.
A moment when you could have defended yourself, but listened instead.
Small deposits.
Again and again.
Until eventually there is something substantial sitting in that account:
Trust.
Goodwill.
Safety.
Affection.
Connection.
And, with any luck, great sex. ;-)
That is what commitment looks like.
Not merely saying, “I love you.”
But behaving, over time, as though the relationship is something enormously valuable.
Because it is.

The most important lesson a male needs to learn to retain membership of the Man Box is:
Don’t be a Girl.

Whatever you do, under all circumstances, no matter what…
Don’t be a girl

​Don’t look like a girl – don’t smell like a girl – don’t wear girl clothes – don’t do girl things like dance or like ballet – don’t do a girl job – don’t feel – don’t empathise - don’t cry – don’t negotiate (especially with a girl)  – don’t go to the doctor till the last minute – don’t lose -  don’t fail.
 
If you do, you will be shamed, and abused… and even violenced
till you learn to get back in that box.
 
And if you rebel or just don’t get it,
And wear pink or purple or polka dots to the building site one day…
the rejection from the Man Club is often too great to bear.
Its better to be dead.
 
And who does this shaming and abusing?
Other men.
Women do their fair share.
But mostly, its men.
 
All those girly qualities rejected again and again.
And then you spend your whole life trying to get back into that womb,
to get even a taste of that feminine.
You want it so bad, like an addict, you think about it day and night,
you will take it, you will spend lots of money to get it, you will destroy your marriage for it, lose your kids, you will rape it, you will kill for it.
 
But that normal softer part of you, that society mistakenly calls ‘feminine’,
Is an integral part of you.
 
But you have to cut it off, truncate it, squash and distort it
Till all that is left, is a cartoonish empty caricature of ‘what it means to be a ‘real man’.
 
You are caught in the most horrifying paradox of all
Don’t be a girl – but you got to have the girl.
 
This endless impossible quest rips you apart internally.
And as you rip those muscles at the gym, mistakenly thinking that the girl
(who you unconsciously despise) will want you more when you look that way,
You are filled with an unspeakable rage at the unfairness,
the confusion, the overwhelming difficulty of the task.
 
To keep the girl, to get the sex, to fill the emptiness,
You have to understand what makes her tick,
What she wants, what turns her on…
This being that you have been taught again and again and again
To despise
To despise most every quality that she embodies
 
And yet you can’t get enough…
The emptiness calls
 
And if she opens her mouth to express anything
that doesn’t fit into your picture of how she should be,
if she’s not totally grateful for all the effort you put in
To toil endless hours at that job
Build that house,
Mow that lawn
 
And if she won’t ‘give’ you sex, the sex that you deserve, that you are owed
For having to spend a lifetime crushing that girl part.
Then you have every right to get it elsewhere, in whatever way you can
And at whatever cost.
 
Because deep down, you suspect you may be nothing without that girl part
 
That if you cant fill yourself from that girl cup,
You are starved and empty and worthless
And life is meaningless
So, you feel that righteous anger rise within you.
The anger that comes from deep, deep powerlessness
The powerlessness that comes from
you don’t know that you don’t know that you don’t know
 
And so, you take it out on them.
After all, they are weaker.
It’s not so hard when they don’t fight back.
Crush that bitch, crush her as hard as you have crushed yourself.
As hard as your father or teacher or boss or friend
Crushed the aliveness, the creativity, the joy, the soft squishiness of you
The you that lives in the straightjacket, the suffocating confines of that ManBox
The ManBox that you might not have known even existed.
 
Until now...

​Copywrite Frances Amaroux  2019   

And here is Justin Baldoni - actor - beautifully expressing the same idea.
WHY I'M DONE TRYING TO BE "MAN ENOUGH"

​

Sit in the Fire

One of the hardest things to do in a healthy relationship or friendship is to sit in the fire — to stay present when someone you love is angry.

Provided they are not insulting, demeaning, threatening or physically harming you, one of the most powerful things you can do is resist the urge to defend yourself, fix the problem or walk away.

First, breathe.
Ground yourself.

Then stay present.

Listen until you understand not only what they are saying, but what they are feeling underneath it.

Listen. Feel. Empathise.

Avoid giving advice unless they ask for it. And try not to rush towards explaining your side before they have felt fully heard.

​This does not mean that everything they are saying is necessarily accurate, fair or reasonable. Nor does it mean you have to agree with them.

It simply means that, before you decide what you think about their anger, you are willing to understand where it is coming from.

Anger is often a protective emotion.
Beneath it there may be hurt, fear, disappointment, betrayal, helplessness or a sense that something important has been violated.

If you can stay present long enough to hear what is underneath the anger, something quite remarkable can happen.

The nervous system begins to settle.
Defensiveness softens.

The person who is angry begins to feel seen rather than opposed.

And what could have become a battle can sometimes become a moment of deeper intimacy.

If it feels safe and welcome, gentle physical connection can also help — a hand held, a touch on the arm, sitting a little closer. But never force contact when someone needs space.

So leave fear and judgement at the door as much as you can.
Open your heart.
Listen to understand.
And stay in the heat long enough to discover what the anger is trying to tell you.

Sit in the fire.

​But remember: staying present is not the same as tolerating abuse.

The deeper you look, the more it would appear that the negative controllers in our society are weaponising this ‘toxic masculinity’ phrase as a way to create even more division.  It’s their age-old schtick. Just like they did with the Feminist movement, which these days resembles nothing like it was intended to be. Classic Feminism was simply about equal access to rights and resources. And surely no ethical person can quibble with that?  But now we have the manipulated psyop of Neo-Feminism, which looks nothing like what Classic Feminism was designed to do ( more on this in future writings.)

But unless more men face their shadow - the shadow of their Patriarchal-Dominator past (and some present). Unless they truly learn to listen to how things have been ( and still are for many women), then they will never truly be able to come into sacred union with the Healed Feminine.       

I have great compassion for how men have been treated under this system. That is a whole other story which I will be dealing with in future posts!! But it was they who wield/ed unbalanced power, and therefore it is they who must take ownership of this and acknowledge the damage that has been wrought upon the Feminine.

Similarly, if someone does wrong and ends up in jail, it’s much easier for people to be motivated to help and support them, if they own up to their part for whatever got them there.   

So, if men as a whole, refuse to acknowledge the horrors perpetrated against women for millennia,  then it's impossible for us as a societal whole to move to the next stage to acknowledge the equally, but more subtle abuse that men experience under this Dominator System.

Healers know that unless we individually face our shadow/demons and take full responsibility, then we will continue causing harm to ourselves or others.
Hence why the Men’s movement - tho incredibly important - seems to go round in circles - seems blocked and stultified.

So, a call to Men….
​I, and many women I know, are here to hold you safe, so you can do the work that needs to be done.  So that we can both fly strong together to a new world of Co-operation and Partnership