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This wise woman’s words shot through me like a bolt of lightning. I knew instinctively that what she was telling me was true. My ability to love so completely was indeed a blessing. Over the years, I’ve had to continually remind myself that putting love first is not a “problem” I have, or an unhealthy habit I need to get rid of – it is the way I am as a woman. When I am putting love first, I am surrendering to my most essential and joyous nature.
I believe that when we as women learn to celebrate our ability to love deeply, and to honor ourselves for our beautiful, abundant hearts, we will make it easier for the men in our lives to do the same.
Perhaps you’re a woman reading this chapter and having a different experience from that of my friend. Perhaps you’re thinking that the information doesn’t completely apply to you, because your heart doesn’t feel as loving as you think it should. Sometimes life’s painful experiences can cause a woman to shut down her heart, to vow never to put love first again.
If you grew up in an emotionally cold family, for instance, you may have made an unconscious decision as a young girl that it wasn’t safe to share your love and open yourself to intimacy. A painful childhood can put a damper on a woman’s inherent tendency to love deeply. The love is there, but you just don’t allow yourself to let it flow.
Sometimes it’s what happens to us as an adult that drives us to turn away from loving. An emotionally damaging relationship with a man can leave a woman feeling wounded and closed off. Often women who’ve been hurt will consciously take their focus off of love, and put it exclusively on work and career, hoping to avoid more pain. Their Love Pie may look more like a traditional male’s, with very little conscious focus on relationships. This “love reversal” is a form of protection. It’s as if we unconsciously decide to become more cold and unfeeling – like the people who’ve hurt us.
Whenever I work with women who have wounded hearts, I discover that deep inside, their longing for intimacy and connection is just as powerful as ever – its the willingness to seek it out that has changed. So perhaps you might say that for these women, their outer Love Pie looks more like a man’s, but their “inner” Love Pie is still more traditionally female.
Perhaps you’ve had times in your life when you’ve been that wounded woman. Perhaps you’re still there and are struggling to break free of those emotional chains and love again. I hope that the information I’ve presented will help you begin to heal your judgments about yourself, to love and accept yourself the way you are, and cherish the gift of your beautiful heart.
If you are a man who has loved or does love a wounded woman, know that what you’ll learn from this book will help you to help her learn to trust her own love again. The more you let her know what a gift her love is to you, the more she will begin to value herself as a woman.
* I couldn’t resist the last example!
Why do women always want to make things better? Why do we feel compelled to talk about the problems in our relationship with our partner? Why do we feel the need to help when we see the man we love going through a hard time? Why do we so enjoy making plans? Why do we work so hard to ensure harmony with our lover?
In this chapter, I’m going to share with you a second secret about who women are that’s the motivation for so much of how we behave in relationships. It is one of the most beautiful qualities women possess, one that is such an integral part of our psyche that we don’t even think about it. And it’s the answer to all of the above questions.
WHAT WOMEN WANT MEN TO KNOW:
Women are creators.
It is a woman’s nature to create. Women are life-givers. This is our mystery and our magic – we have the power to bring forth something out of nothing.
This ability to give birth to life is most obvious when we become mothers and bring a child into the world. But whether or not we have children, as women we are always giving birth: always creating something where nothing existed before, if not with our bodies, then with our words, our actions, our love. We do this when we give birth to a delicious meal for our family, or a party for a friend, or a bedtime story for our child, or a more effective way to market our company’s product, or an intimate conversation with our partner, or a display of flowers in a vase.
As creators, women are also alchemists; we change the form of things. We transmute the ordinary into the beautiful, the empty into the meaningful, that which was struggling into that which suddenly flourishes. We rarely encounter things that we do not feel inspired or at least tempted to improve upon, whether it’s the way a room is decorated or the way a friend is handling a problem in her relationship, the way we are wearing our hair or the way we have organized our jewelry in a drawer, the way our partner set the table for dinner or the way the two of us are communicating.
Women reading these words will feel a throb of recognition in their hearts. “Yes,” a voice within you says, “I know this to be true.” And for most women, it is. Yet our nature to create is so much a part of us, we rarely think about it or acknowledge it for what it is. We just do it. For instance:
All of the above scenarios sound lovely, and harmless enough, don’t they? How, then, could a woman’s creative expression be a problem in her relationship with a man? Read on to learn how women create, yet why it’s easy for a man to misinterpret and misunderstand a woman’s creative instincts.
HOW