The #1 Thing Every Woman Needs To Know About Men

I constantly get asked to share the number one thing I’ve learned about men since I became a relationship coach. I also wrote a book called 10 Things Every Woman Needs to Know About Men, and when it came out the only question I got asked was: “So what’s the number-one thing I need to know?”

I used to have a few answers to this question, but in recent years it’s become clear to me that there really is only one. There is one core thing to understand about men, and when you get it, everything else makes sense. It is the one thing that changed my relationship when I really realized what it means.

Stop asking if he loves you. Start showing him he makes you happy, and watch what happens!

Detached, Sabrina Alexis Bendory

What it comes down to is how vital it is for a man to feel significant, like he’s having a meaningful impact. You may have heard this before, but there is such a difference between hearing something and internalizing it.

Masculine energy is typically goal-oriented and focused. This is something we’ve all heard before, and most women know that men aren’t as skilled at multitasking as we are. But let’s go deeper and look at the reason.

The reason men are so focused and single-minded is because a man gains his sense of significance based on his ability to have an impact on the world. This doesn’t mean relationships aren’t important to men (they are), but in order for a man to feel good about himself and his life, he needs to feel significant, he needs to feel like he’s winning. And when he feels like a winner, he can be the best man possible in a relationship. When he feels like a loser, he is at his absolute worst.

Even though I knew all about this concept, that didn’t stop me from making my now husband feel like a loser when we were engaged and going through a rough patch. I couldn’t quite help it. It was a stressful time and I felt like he was adding to my stress instead of helping me to alleviate it.

I know that I can be a direct, harsh, sometimes critical person. I see it as being a perfectionist, as striving for excellence. Sometimes this is a good thing, but other times it can be a very negative thing.

When I was engaged and dealing with all the stress that comes with planning a wedding, I moved on my own into our new apartment a few months before the big day and was greeted by something out of a horror movie: it was massively infested with roaches.

It was awful and disgusting and I was barely sleeping or eating, and I became angry and resentful because I didn’t think he was being sympathetic or supportive enough based on what I had to deal with (his comment, “Relax, they’re just bugs,” really pushed me to a new level of seeing red).

The real way to a man’s heart isn’t food or flattery; it’s making him feel significant, seen, and appreciated.

Sabrina Alexis Bendory

I also felt like he was making wedding planning more stressful. He gave me a hard time about almost every aspect of the wedding, and I got mad at him for being so difficult and unsupportive. I was also mad that he wasn’t as loving towards me as he used to be and that he now seemed uncomfortable around me. I was having a hard time and just needed him to be nice to me!

OK, long story short, we were both at fault in our own way. Both of us were being difficult and neither one of us was being empathetic to the other.

Things changed one day when, for once, we were discussing our issues lovingly and without blame and resentment, and he said to me, “I feel like I’m always failing you. Like I can never do anything right and everything I do is going to upset you or make you disappointed in me. That’s why it’s hard for me to be loving and comfortable around you.”

It was a big slap-in-the-face moment. Here I was, this wise and worldly relationships expert, writing about how important it is to show a man appreciation and how important it is for a man to feel like a winner, and I was making the love of my life feel like a worthless loser.

I’m not saying he was totally innocent; he did do things that hurt me and he made a difficult time in my life even more difficult, but I still didn’t handle it right.

I would get mad at him for expressing his feelings because it stressed me out, when really I should have listened to and acknowledged him. I didn’t see the good intentions behind the ways he was trying to be there for me because I was so mad about all the things he was doing that I didn’t like.

After we had that talk, I shifted gears and instead of making him feel bad about what he wasn’t doing right, I lovingly showed my appreciation for what he was doing right. (This ties into a concept I’ve mentioned several times throughout this book: the only person you can change is yourself. I could have stayed mad and simmered in resentment because of what he did wrong, but where would that have gotten us?)

When a man feels like he’s “winning” at making you happy, he goes out of his way to make you happy. After I changed my response to him, the entire relationship dynamic changed. He was so sweet and loving and so supportive and helpful in dealing with our unwanted houseguests. While at first the roaches put a strain on our relationship, once we started communicating properly and giving each other what the other needed (for him, feeling like a winner; for me, getting support and empathy), the whole ordeal ended up bringing us closer…seriously!

This is just one little example that illustrates a much larger point. Resentment is poison for a relationship. Maybe you’re mad at him and maybe it’s justified, but harshly criticizing him or focusing on the negative will only make him feel like a loser. Once he feels like a loser, he’ll start resenting you, which will in turn cause him to do things that make you resent him, and the cycle will continue. Someone needs to be the one to put a stop to it. While it isn’t always easy, it is so worth it and will make such an incredible difference in your relationship. Being compassionate and loving is always the solution. Being negative and critical always causes more problems than it solves.

How Gratitude Changes Everything

One of the first life lessons little kids are taught is to always say, “Thank you.” When people do something nice for you, you thank them. It’s a concept that is drummed into our heads starting at the age of about two. But you’ll notice that saying thanks doesn’t always come easily. Very rarely does a kid remember to say it—it usually follows a prompt by a parent: Now, what do you say? And it never gets easier.

Gratitude doesn’t come easily or naturally to most of us; rather, it’s a skill that needs to be honed and crafted. But when you get it down, it can literally change your life. Countless studies have demonstrated that expressing gratitude can vastly increase our physical and emotional well-being.

Gratitude can also have enormous implications for your relationship and your ability to find love if you aren’t currently in a relationship. When both partners see the good in one another and feel appreciative, the relationship is filled with love, connection, and harmony. When one or both partners focus on what the other isn’t doing and take each other for granted, the relationship is filled with resentment, frustration, and bitterness.

A good relationship starts with you. When you bring positivity and happiness into the relationship, your partner will rise up to match it, and then your relationship will flourish.

If you want your life and your relationship to improve, you can’t blame circumstances or your partner. Instead, you need to take responsibility and make internal changes that lead to external ones. And the most important lesson is that of giving thanks.

Why Is It So Hard To Appreciate?

Life can tear a lot of us down. As the years go by, bitter experiences pile up and our hearts become shrouded with hurt and pain. The more jaded we become, the harder it is to see beyond the darkness and feel thankful for anything.

A lot of us turn ourselves into victims in the story of our own lives, and we feel justified in doing this: we blame our parents, our upbringing, the boy who broke our heart, the bad economy. I’m not saying none of it is valid, but when you dwell on all the bad hands you’ve been dealt, you fuel the fire of anger and resentment, and this only makes for an even more miserable experience.

When it comes to relationships, expressing gratitude can be even more challenging because the stakes are so much higher. Romantic relationships can cause many emotions to rise to the surface. Some are good and exhilarating, and some are bad and rooted in pain from the past. All of us look at life through a lens that is colored by our own experiences and we form certain expectations as a result.

When you measure a guy against this code of expected behavior, he will always fall short and you will always feel disappointed. The reason he’ll fall short is because no one can get it right every single time. He isn’t a mind reader, and he has been shaped by a whole different set of experiences.

When you think a guy should do something and if he doesn’t it means he doesn’t care, then you ignore all the things he is doing to show he cares. You get all riled up because of a few things that you (or rather, your unconscious mind) think a man should do when he loves a woman. You feel hurt and unloved and might start blaming him for “making” you feel a certain way. When you’re in this headspace, you will not be able to appreciate anything he does and will silently resent him for not doing more. He can text you back promptly every single time and you will still get upset the one time he takes a little longer to get back to you.

When You Appreciate A Man…

Everyone likes appreciation; we all want to be seen and acknowledged for what we do. But appreciation hits different notes for men and women. Typically, women want to feel adored and cherished above anything else in order to feel happy in a relationship. Men need to feel appreciated and acknowledged. If a man doesn’t feel that, he will either leave the relationship or stay in it and feel miserable.

When a man feels like a woman appreciates him, he will go above and beyond to make her happy. It’s not just about appreciating what he does, it’s about appreciating who he is. What a man wants more than anything is a woman who is happy with him. That’s really it. And a woman who expresses gratitude and is happy with who he is and what he does is the woman he wants to commit himself to.

The more gratitude you feel for him, the more connected he will feel to you and the more he will come to appreciate you. I’m not saying you’re never allowed to be disappointed or upset with him, but there is a difference between disapproving of an action and disapproving of a person. You can express your discontent in a loving way that still conveys an appreciation for his character, as opposed to conveying it in a punishing and blaming way that makes him feel bad or guilty.

For example:

• “I know you didn’t mean it, I know you were only trying to be helpful, but sometimes I just need you to hear me out and give me a hug when I’m venting about something upsetting that happened.”

The fact is, he really isn’t trying to hurt you, but sometimes things he does will make you upset. And sometimes things you do will make him upset. When addressing a problem, it’s best to keep in mind that neither person is intentionally trying to upset the other.

If you want more love from your man, you need to make him feel loved. The way to do this is to show genuine appreciation for the things he does. Look at the intention, not the action. He’s not going to get it right every single time—that just isn’t possible. But the majority of the time, his intentions are good. He set out to make you happy, and that deserves to be appreciated. You don’t need to give him anything in return; just you being happy with who he is and what he does is all he needs from you.

Here are some examples of emotional hot phrases for a man (obviously they will vary depending on the man):

• I really admire how dedicated you are to your job and appreciate how hard you work.
• You are so committed to causes that are meaningful to you, and it’s really admirable.
• I love that you can walk into a room and be best friends with total strangers, it’s such a unique gift.
• I appreciate how hard you try to make me happy. I know I don’t always show it, but I notice it and it means so much to me.
• Thank you for being so helpful around the house, you really go above and beyond and I don’t know what I would do without you.

And if you get stuck…this one is always a winner:

• I admire the man that you are.

How To Train Your Mind To Be More Grateful

Now that we’ve covered why it’s important to be grateful, let’s talk about tangible ways to do it.

I think the most powerful way to retrain your mind to be more grateful is to keep a gratitude journal. A teacher of mine gave me this suggestion many years ago, and I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. I considered myself a very grateful person and did not see how it would benefit me at all. But I gave it a try nevertheless, and wow…it was not as easy as I expected.

My teacher told me to write down three things I was grateful for every day. Easy enough. The catch was that they always had to be different, as in no reruns.

As the days passed and the exercise got a little more difficult, I noticed myself changing. I started to live every day actively looking for things to be grateful for. Usually this was because I wanted to come up with three things and just be done with it, like getting in an early morning workout. I thought it would only continue to get harder, but a funny thing happened after a few weeks—it actually got easier. And soon, I was finding way more than just three new things to be grateful for each day. I kept going with this for months and can affirm that it is absolutely life-changing. I felt so calm and so at ease and just happier all around.

If you’re having trouble in your relationship, I highly suggest you think of two or three things every day that you love and appreciate about your partner. You don’t even need to tell him you’re doing it or what the things are. Just think about it every day and write it down. And like I did in my exercise, think of new things every day. It can be things he did for you or things about him. Focus on everything he does right, and see how it impacts your relationship. (Mark my word, you’ll start seeing major changes within about a week or two.)

Even if you aren’t having major issues in your relationship, anytime your partner does something that annoys or frustrates you, just think about a few reasons why you care about him and why you’re grateful to have him in your life.

I just want to add that this does not apply to relationships where there is physical or emotional abuse. I’m talking about healthy, functioning relationships that just get rocky from time to time, as most relationships do.

If you’re single, think about what you love about your life right now. Think about what you appreciate and the good things that happen throughout the day. I think writing it out is best because it makes it more real, but if that feels like too much of a commitment then just spend time every day reflecting on it.

Practicing gratitude on a daily basis can literally rewire you. It can transform the way you think, which will change the way you feel and the vibe you transmit. People can naturally pick up on the vibes someone is sending out. When you feel bitter or angry or jaded on the inside, it will come across on the outside no matter how you try to hide it. There is no faking being in a good place. You have to work on it, and if you do, suddenly everything will change and you’ll notice enormous improvements in all areas of your life.

Remember this: The real way to a man’s heart is to appreciate him and empower him. The easiest way to do this is to train yourself to see the good, both in him and in your life in general.