Everyone has a point of view, literally meaning a place from which we are viewing. People see things from different points of view all the time. Communication is often the process of getting others to see our point of view, or at the very least confirming that we see things from the same perspective. 
During this series I am going to ask you to look at Men vs. Women. When I say either of these, I mean masculine and feminine. Some of us have more masculine or feminine traits based on our hormone levels and other things. Not only is it normal, but also good, that people don’t always fit into these roles. We realize that everyone is different, but in order to discuss some things, you need to set some assumptions. For the sake of simplicity, please think of men as masculine, and women as feminine. If your situation happens to be different, you can simply inject yourself into this paradigm! If you’d like to tell us about your situation, please leave us a comment.
Most women, when they see a man, see him as compared to the ideal woman. Compared to this ideal woman, the man is dysfunctional, defective and misbehaving. When I say “Ideal woman†I mean what we would consider the most perfect, ideal woman based on society’s views and what we make them mean. This image of the ideal women may be informed by what we learn from the media, or our family, friends and society about being perfect.
What is perfect or ideal anyway? It is different for everyone, but there are some sweeping generalizations that seem to apply to everyone. For example, most people would say that the ideal woman has a calm and nurturing side to her. We might also say that the ideal woman is very attuned to people’s feelings, making her very empathetic.
We not only compare our men to the ideal woman, we compare ourselves to the ideal woman as well. When our men do something we do not like we punish them and ourselves by criticizing and withholding things. We say things like “How could you do that?! That’s not the way you do that! What are you stupid?” And then you say to yourself something like, “He must not care about me, or I’m not good enough because if I was he wouldn’t say that or do that.†Then you withhold something or treat yourself badly to punish them and yourself. Maybe you would stop talking to your man, or withhold love and affection, sex, or anything else. You also might punish yourself by eating some cake or having an extra alcoholic drink to make you feel better. Does any of this sound familiar?
By not comparing yourself or your mate to the ideal woman and accepting yourself and them for who you truly are, which is actually perfect, whole and complete, you can start empowering yourself, your mate and your relationship immediately. This is truly important, and the realization that we must accept truths in this world can come as a shock to some. This is not to say that we shouldn’t set out to make the world a better place for ourselves, but WHILE we are working on those things together with the people and things in our life, we must accept the current reality and live within in.
Damage may have been done, so it may take time to repair, but once a pattern of acceptance exists in the relationship; it will become stronger and stronger.
