Men are vulnerable and often get hurt by their Relationships.

The live-in relationships I've attempted haven't turned into the stuff with which fairy tales are made.  At this point my question (to me) is how come I've faced situations as these over & over? Like many others I tend to get hurt from relationships.  I end up with some bad feelings and the negativity is hard to deal with.  I've pondered many of these issues to great lengths.  

I think the reason hurt happens more with men (than women) is due to our having a different physiological make-up. Women tend to be feeling & emotional creatures, who need loving.
They need to be appreciated & pampered (some more than others) for the lovely & beautiful creatures.  They love hearing how special they are. You can not tell a women too many time that you love everything about them.  How they talk, walk & how good they look in the clothes they wear.  Even the food they cook, & everything  they do you must appreciate. We all need to feel loved. But love is a two way street.  With lots of speed traps in between.

In the relationship area women rule. Ah Feelings!  Women are structured to feel everything & anything.  If we're having a bad day, we don't have to say a word, because our woman can sense it.  When things are going great they can pick up on this & we don't have to say anything.  

They notice everything! A lot of things which men miss a woman picks up on.  Remember each & every man was brought into this world by a woman, his mother.  Women comprehend what we are about much more than us. 

Since relationships are based upon feelings, and because Women are the masters in the 'feelings' department, it is logical to reason out that women will always have the upper hand when the topic of relationships comes up.  We know what we feel, and we are sometimes in tune with our emotional side.  But a woman can tune in to your emotional side even when you do not notice it.  A women can understand so much about you, and not let on that she knows anything about it.  Women can be sneaks & tricksters though, so men must be careful in their dealings with Women. The fact is that this world could not run the way it does, if it weren't for their softness, and nurturing natures, which they apply to all aspects of life.  We men get frustrated (at times) and at other times feel very confounded by them. All the same, we're completely fascinated by the species of females. We will be willing to pay good money just to watch them as they prance around and strip down to nothing. We spend a great deal of our time trying to attract and impress females.
We will think about them, often will fight over them, and we wish to be loved by them. It has been proven that men think about women many more times each day than a women does thinking   about her man. 
I'm Howard Buchin and I welcome your comments and/or questions to my site The Relationship Guru. 
Thank you in advance for your input.

Breaking Up Is Hard to do.

Breaking Up

What's the right way to break-up? What is involved in breaking up properly? Are there a set of reasonable steps one should follow to cleanly break up?  It should be easy to be single again. It should be straightforward  but why isn't it? It's not simple at all.  In fact it is more complex than trying to find someone, to 'couple' with in the first place.  Getting back to singledom can be a rocky road.

Do you suddenly exclaim, 'Hey honey. I've an idea, let's go back living separate lives & start enjoying our lives again? This relationship we have is the pits!'

Hang on buster! Not so fast. Remember that both of you realized at one point you had feelings for one another and now both of you have to come the conclusion that your relationship is now going nowhere.  The decision to split is usually made by one party over the other.  This makes it really tough decision.  Splitting up is hard, & sticking with your decision is very difficult.  It is usually all for the best though. Making the decision to split will be just the first of many hard obstacles you are going to have to face as per the break up.

The feelings involved in splitting up are complicated.  Even though it might the decision might be one that you made, there's a strong feeling of being rejected. Even worse there is a feeling of getting cast aside, or dumped as it's called. I can't describe the full range of feelings since there are so many you must endure. Going through the (break-up) process when separating you start to understand why women are so complicated. They are all about emotions and feelings.

Breaking apart is almost like you are attending a funeral, in this case you are free to tell your mate  some final parting volleys of criticism or whatever. They are like the soon-to-be deceased.  It feels morbid to have known someone for so long so intimately and now to realize you'll likely never cross paths again. It is like a death of sorts.  There is a defined grieving period after it's over.  This is in order that each of your brains is allowed to comprehend what has happened, and accept it as reality.  There is no longer going to be someone there for you. And you will no longer be there for someone else as well. Nobody to listen to your complaints, & nobody to sit and patiently and assist you with life's everyday disasters.  

What happens to the dream of being together? For now it's over, and possibly it over for ever.  It's the end of the road. The bitter end as they call it. You must make a fresh start. Each party must begin again.  If you want it or not you must start again. 

If you've been involved with a live-in, common law relationship, as I was, then there's a lot less legal matters to deal with.  But that doesn't mean you do not need to consult with a lawyer. That doesn't mean you don't have to deal with all the items purchased when you were a couple. It's never easily divided up as you might guess.  We had a male and female cat who were inseparable from being very young.  How could we separate them?  I was against splitting them up, but my feeling was over-ruled.  This is why things have to be made clear from the outset. The old saying goes that Family Court is a bad choice of places to start to work out a Separation Agreement or Divorce Settlement, is very true.

Just when you think you are over it, once in a while something comes up, and it seems you start to run through the gamut of emotions. Feelings and emotions are very deep, much more so than the logical or thinking parts to our brain. So the hurt is felt much more deeply.

It is harder breaking off from a bad relationship than a good one. Why is this true?  I suppose  because more emotions are tied up (even though they are more negative) when you are embroiled in  a bad relationship.  Do you remember the last time you were really really mad.  How about the last time you were very happy?  Both of those events would be so ingrained into your consciousness, and most of the time those feelings which are negative, are more powerful than the good ones.

It is almost akin to being fired from a job.  You are left with the feeling that those bosses were just pure crap anyways!  But then, after some reflection you begin to wonder if there were things you could have done differently, ending up with a very different outcome?     

In my next installment, I will delve into the matter of how you begin to formulate a Separation Agreement and other steps necessary in breaking up.



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