This One's For the Girls

Ladies, today I'm going to reveal to you two very important secrets about men that will help you get what you want from them.  Really.

Secret #1: Men's Thoughts and Behaviors are Controlled Primarily by Their Egos.

They probably don't want to admit this, but men are ruled by their egos, which are truly very fragile.

Men don't "do" emotions very well like women do, so their deep feelings like hurt and grief come out instead as anger, cockiness, being controlling, and a range of abnormal behaviors that we usually label as "midlife crisis."  Psychologists call these things ego defense mechanisms because that's exactly the purpose they serve - protecting his ego.  If a man, instead, broke down crying when he felt hurt and wrote poems to express the pain, in his mind his ego would be dead in a minute.  So, men do more "manly" things instead to deal with painful emotions, and our job is to look beyond the surface and try to figure out what's really going on.

The sidenote to this secret is that men's egos are hurt or helped most by the important women in their lives.
So, if you learn to handle this fragile gem properly, then you will be in a position of great power.

Bottom Line: If you "stroke" a man's ego by appreciating him, pointing out the things that are good about him or that he does well, noticing ways that he's better than other men, etc, he is not only going to love you and give you what you want, but he is going to feel safe with you and is going to be much more likely to be vulnerable and talk about his true underlying emotions, which are otherwise kept under lock and key.  Conversely, if you continually damage a man's ego by criticizing him and pointing out everything he needs to change, he will be like a threatened animal and lash out at you, put up a wall between you, or simply go somewhere else where he can get the ego stroking that he needs.

Secret #2: Men Want You To be Happy!

If you fully understand the first secret, you can understand how your happiness, (the important woman in his life,) is a big factor in the strength of his ego.  In his primeval, manly brain, he naturally feels responsible for protecting his woman and meeting her needs.  If he is successful at this task, he feels good about himself - If not, he feels a blow to his ego.  The way he gauges his success or failure, is by your level of happiness.

We all know that men are problem-solvers, meaning that when there is a problem, even if it's emotional, they want to figure out what they can do about it.  This tends to be frustrating for women who just want someone to commiserate with, but again, the ego is the secret.  When something goes wrong, men immediately, instinctually feel like they could have been doing something better, and therefore, feel their ego threatened.  If they can then be the hero by solving the problem, that saves their ego. 

So, amazingly enough, one of mens' deepest desires is to have happy women.
They work hard at it because it boosts their egos.  The problem, though, is that many women take advantage of this trait and get the reverse effect - think Kate of Jon and Kate Plus 8.  She was an all too public example of a trap that many women fall into of never being satisfied.  No matter what Jon did for her or how good their life was, there was ALWAYS something that she was upset or nagging about, and we rarely ever heard her thanking or praising him.  In more common terms, this is called being a bitch.  As outsiders observing all this, we didn't feel surprised when he left and immediately had another woman in his life.  This is because men's egos will drive them to a certain extent to keep trying to make the woman happy, but at some point when they feel they are just failing, their ego is then threatened and they have to protect it.

Bottom Line: If you make an effort to find things to be happy about in your life, especially things related to your man, and regularly show or express your happiness, your guy will feel good about himself and do even more to try to make you happy.  If you are constantly telling and showing him how much better things could be, he will feel bad about himself and give up.  

Now, some women are saying that it's not our responsibility to make men feel good about themselves and they should just learn on their own to express emotions better if they really care. I understand this initial reaction because these behaviors are the exact opposite of what we as women do, but you've got to understand that this is just another part of the biological, hard-wired differences between male and female brains, and you would then be saying that men should be women.  You might also think that men need to work harder to understand women, which just isn't fair if we don't work just as hard to understand them. 
So, be smart! - Accept the facts as they are, and make them work in your favor!