Man loses, and learns another lesson.

While having dinner with my wife and son the other night, my wife asked me how I liked my salad.  It seemed innocent enough.  On the surface, a reasonable question, because she had just made her version of a particular salad that we had both enjoyed from a recent restaurant visit.

Now, I usually understand feminine communication well, but being the clueless male that I am from time to time.  I was caught off guard involved in a side conversation with my son.

I turned to her and replied, “I like the vegetables cut a little smaller”.  For me at that moment, it was the right answer to a simple question.  Big mistake!  I had not looked closely enough at her before I answered the question.

I had failed a test of masculine energy.

I had not realized the question was how do you like the salad; the salad of our lives together?

If I had, she would not have snapped “nothing is ever good enough for you”.  Now catching up fast, I realized that I had answered the wrong question.  So I chose to say nothing despite an energy rising of… what the *#&^!…. are you talking about?  I knew that for her, the best thing for me to do in that moment was to let her have her space and the tiny emotional storm would pass, and of course it did.

If the emotional storm was bigger, I would have done something very differently, because I do understand how feminine energy communicates.

In an attempt to be open with her feminine energy and vulnerability, she had trusted me enough to test me and my masculine energy with the following:

Is what I am doing for you good enough?  Am I enough for you?  Can you accept me unconditionally even when I am scared and emotional?   Will you reject me?  Can you see how much I love you by this gesture to please you?  Can you sense my anticipation of your answer?  Can you see how important it is in this moment to reassure me that I am OK, and to give me your total attention?  Do you love me?

If you are a man reading this you are probably going “HUH!  You’ve got to be kidding me”.   If you are a feminine woman you are probably smiling and totally relating to this situation.

For this woman, if I were to have done it right, I would have looked her deeply in the eyes and said “I love you, …the salad is really great. I really appreciate you… making it for me.   I would  also have kept looking in her eyes to see  if she had anything else to say, and to check in on her reaction.

I cook dinner alot, but the next time I found her making the same salad or something similar, I would say “I think I would like to try the vegetables cut really small tonight, do you want me to help you do it?”

 

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