Summary of Patricia Love & Steven Stosny's How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Marlene and Mark’s story is common. They once enjoyed the closeness they felt with each other, but now that they are older, that feeling has gone away. It is easy for couples to slip into this pattern, because the different vulnerabilities that so greatly influence the way men and women interact with each other are virtually invisible.
#2 The differences between male and female vulnerabilities are biological and present from birth. Baby girls are more sensitive to isolation and lack of contact, which explains why they are more easily frightened and anxious.
#3 Male babies are more sensitive to arousal than female babies, and this helps them defend themselves against predators. However, this also means that they are more susceptible to discomfort caused by overstimulation.
#4 Hyperarousal is a male tendency to be constantly on guard against shame. When you're embarrassed, you want to crawl into a hole, and a child feeling shame wants to cover his face because he can't bear to look at you.

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 08 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669351733
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Patricia Love & Steven Stosny's How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Marlene and Mark’s story is common. They once enjoyed the closeness they felt with each other, but now that they are older, that feeling has gone away. It is easy for couples to slip into this pattern, because the different vulnerabilities that so greatly influence the way men and women interact with each other are virtually invisible.

#2

The differences between male and female vulnerabilities are biological and present from birth. Baby girls are more sensitive to isolation and lack of contact, which explains why they are more easily frightened and anxious.

#3

Male babies are more sensitive to arousal than female babies, and this helps them defend themselves against predators. However, this also means that they are more susceptible to discomfort caused by overstimulation.

#4

Hyperarousal is a male tendency to be constantly on guard against shame. When you're embarrassed, you want to crawl into a hole, and a child feeling shame wants to cover his face because he can't bear to look at you.

#5

Intimacy is riskier for little boys when they have consistently felt shame in conjunction with it. If you have a baby boy, you must understand that he likes eye contact, but you must be more patient with him and not start tickling him when he looks away from you.

#6

Men and women have different fears and shame triggers, but what drives them apart is how they manage these differences. If you manage them with criticism, defensiveness, withdrawal, or blame, your relationship will fail. If you manage them with the inspiration to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect, your relationship will flourish.

#7

The male fight-or-flight response is seen most commonly in acts of aggression and competitiveness. Men try to avoid shame by being aggressive, and women try to avoid shame by not being aggressive.

#8

The biological difference between the sexes is slight at birth, and does not produce the large difference in behaviors we see in adults. Most of that comes from culture and socialization, which, from early childhood, set out strict ways to avoid shame and fear based on gender.

#9

The sex difference in vulnerability to fear and shame is not unique to humans. It can be observed in most species of social animals. The females are more fearful, even when they are the primary hunters, and the males are more status oriented.

#10

Theories suggest that women are more loving, compassionate, and caring because they are more vulnerable to fear of harm, isolation, and deprivation. Men are more loving, compassionate, and caring because they are more vulnerable to feeling like failures as parents and lovers.

#11

The beginning of your relationship should be marked by mutual respect and admiration. He should be generous and good company, and she shouldn’t dream of hurting his feelings or his body.

#12

Mark began to hear his wife Marlene’s perfectly reasonable requests for more closeness as The way you love isn’t good enough. This sent him into shame-avoidant behavior – distraction, stonewalling, control, or criticism.

#13

When a woman stops exposing vulnerability to a man, she will start to feel resentment. This is because the emotional void in her life will be filled with resentment, and she will leave him thinking that they have grown apart.

#14

Fear and shame are not bad things. They are natural responses to danger, and can help us stay safe. They can also keep us moral, humane, and true to our deepest values.

#15

The fear-shame dynamic is what keeps a man in a relationship with a woman who constantly criticizes and berates him. The threat of fear or shame is so powerful that the limbic system, which controls your safety, overpowers any form of rational thinking.

#16

The fear-shame dynamic is powerful, but it is not the most important thing about you. Much deeper is the compassionate, loving part of you that was so active when you were a child and when you were first in love with each other.

#17

There is a lot more to what makes something reasonable than its degree of intellectual logic. A computer is logical, but how many important decisions would you want a computer to make. And would you want to marry a computer, even if it looked like Brad Pitt or Nicole Kidman.

#18

When Randy called Sheila irrational, he was actually trying to devalue her opinion, which he found threatening. He was trying to avoid his own shame and fear.

#19

There is no scientific evidence that one sex thinks better than the other. The real difference between men and women is that men try to ignore some of the information provided by their emotions, because there is so much cultural shame attached to men expressing emotions.

#20

The fear-shame dynamic that powers so many of our arguments forces us to make an artificial distinction between logic and emotion.