doonn asks: How can I make my girl friend happy?
Hi doonn –
Okay, so here’s the bad news first. You can’t.
The awful, annoying, heartbreaking truth is that you can’t make anyone happy. If someone’s going to be miserable or angry or sad or depressed, you probably can’t change that.
However, you can try. And that’s a great way to spend your life. You can tell her jokes, you can buy her a nice dinner, you can send her flowers, you can compliment her, you can give her a shoulder-rub, you can kiss her on the earlobe… all of these are good, if they’re what she wants.
But do you know what I’ve found women usually want more than anything else? And especially, what they complain the most about not getting from their romances? Talk.
“What?” I hear you gasp. “What do you mean, talk? I talk to her, and she’s on the phone with all her friends all the time.”
Yes, but there are different kinds of talk. Do you really listen to her? Can you take your ego out of the conversation, so that if she says something that doesn’t make you feel good, you can still hear what she’s saying? And at the same time, can you be telling her what’s going on inside you? Tell her what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking about, and all the while keep showing her that you’re really hearing her?
Oh my gosh, doonn, if you can master that, you have as good a chance of making this woman happy as anyone ever has.
But I want to remind you again: it might not work. Men who love women want nothing more than to make their women happy. And those men have been frustrated for centuries in this quest. Sigmund Freud, who probably learned and discovered more about the human mind in his life than anyone else ever has, said that the question he’d had the most trouble with was What Women Want.
However, I can tell you that I have found that walking up to a woman who loves me, and laying my chin in her lap and looking up at her… that really does work wonders most of the time!
Good Luck my friend!
Shirelle