This seems obvious. Relationship is a team. A Marriage is a team. But often, this is the first thing
that breaks down.

A Relationship is a team with 3 members. There’s you, there’s him, and then there’s the relationship. As a couple, you create a brand new organism, with requirements and needs of its own. Some relationship
problems can be solved simply by both of you considering the needs of the relationship.

You both agree to give up a large part of the freedom of a single life in order to enter into a marriage or relationship team. You both give up romance with anyone else, you give up all kinds of small behaviors your partner can’t live with – smoking, or not bathing – you give up thinking only of yourself, you give up having no responsibility to anyone else.

You give up complete independence for interdependence. Relationship makes you deal with emotional traumas from the past, with bad, learned habits and with instincts you’d rather not deal with – the urge to be
dependent, to always have your way…

Supporting the Team is about honoring the cornerstone of Relationship – Friendship. A good place to
start is:

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER

When you want to build a relationship with someone, you give energy to them. You’re interested in them. You learn about them – what makes them happy, what fascinates them, what irritates them.

See if you can answer some basic questions about your man. What does he like for breakfast, for dinner? What does he like you to wear? How does he feel about his job? What upsets him most in life? Which is his favorite tie? What were the names of his childhood pets? Where would he like to live if he could live anywhere? What car does he covet? What’s his favorite thing about being married?

What is his biggest frustration about being married? When is his favorite time for sex? What’s his favorite sexual activity?

What’s his all-time favorite movie? Who’s the sexiest, most beautiful female movie star to him? What don’t you know about your partner that you wish you knew?

Many years ago, when I was turning around my marriage, I read many books that helped me. Parenting books, Shirley Luthman’s wonderful book about Masculine and Feminine energy, Intimacy: The Essence of Male & Female, Shakti Gawain’s Living In The Light, books on Assertiveness Training for women, and Dr. Patricia Allen’s great works, Getting To I Do and Staying Married And Loving It, in which she goes deeply into the concept of Masculine and Feminine
energy, its basis in psychological theory, and how it works and doesn’t in our relationships.

More recently, the works of David Deida, especially his Dear Lover, can help you understand these concepts from a male point-of-view.
All these books so changed my life that my own work is now completely devoted to helping women actually use
these concepts. To break them down into bite-sized Tools we can easily follow, anytime and on our own.
And here, Key #2 starts with Dr. Allen’s concept that a Relationship needs a Masculine energy partner and a
Feminine energy partner – one of each, regardless of gender or who chooses which role.

That you either wear the pants in the Relationship, or he does. And that you’re free to choose either role – but you
can’t have both.

In other words: One of you gets to be the “boy,” and one of you gets to be the “girl.”

Do you know already which you’d like to choose?

To help you make a choice, think about what you want in a relationship and what you want your man to be like.
If what you want in a partner, or perhaps a husband, is a Masculine, respectable, stable John Wayne type — someone
who’ll cherish your feelings and adore you for just being who you are – then you have to choose to be the girl.
If what you want in a partner is more a fun, sensitive, emotional and expressive fellow, you may want to choose to
be the boy.

We say we are, but are we really? Not wanting to be lonely, or wanting a date for Saturday night isn’t enough to keep a
relationship together.

It’s your decision to share your life with someone that opens up the doors to your dream relationship. Really think about it.

Is there space in your life for someone else who has legitimate claims on your time and energy? Is there room in your home for a man? Are you a perfectionist who needs everything in its place?

Ask yourself: Do I really want a relationship? Am I really willing to make time and energy for it?

Are you more attached to your possessions, ideas, opinions, independence, freedom, and life style than you are to the idea of a relationship with all its messy physicality and messy emotions?

Ask yourself: Am I willing to let someone who is not completely perfect into my heart? Into my emotional life? Write what that would look like to you in your daily life.

And what about the level of relationship you’re willing to commit to? Do you want to be married? Is there a glimmer of desire in you for marriage and family that you’re hiding even from yourself? Are you afraid to have big dreams and big expectations for your future?

Ask yourself: Am I ready to say flat-out that I want to be married?

A man who’s found the woman he loves has no trouble committing to marriage. But we women often consume our romantic energy with planning and thinking and organizing, just to keep from feeling our real desires.

We retreat behind a wall of busywork – cooking, doing, offering, functioning – that blocks our men from accessing our feelings and denies them what we want most, romance.

How do you know if your husband or boyfriend has what it takes to step up to the plate and be a full partner for you? You don’t. Key #1 is about deciding, right now, up front, if he’s worth your commitment to him.

We’re not talking about his potential, and we’re not talking about the quality of the relationship – because we’re going to work on that, but we’re talking about the man – we’re talking about exactly the way he is right now.

If you’re married or engaged, this is about making the commitment 100% to be in the relationship you have, to the man you’re with.

If you’re not married or engaged, then you are officially only “dating” either many men, or one man who’s asked you to be exclusive and you’ve agreed.

If you’re dating, then don’t commit 100% to anyone but yourself. Commit instead to your desire to be in a relationship – commit to the idea of relationship – commit to what’s best for your ideal dream of relationship. Commit to wanting to be married!

Much has been made of men’s so-called “Fear of Intimacy” issues. I, for one, don’t believe that “Fear of Intimacy” has ever stopped a man from committing himself to a woman he really wants. The nature of a man is to Go for it – and he knows what “it” involves – the whole kit and caboodle of relationship. He’s ready and willing to give his whole heart to the woman he wants.

Women, on the other hand, make relationship decisions based on many factors other than their deep connection to the man. They judge a man’s potential, and suitability, and use their heads a lot more than men do. When we women marry, we’ve thought it all out, envisioned the relationship far into the future, and commit ourselves on many levels, but “Fear of Intimacy” keeps us from really committing with our hearts.

I believe that women, more than men, fear losing autonomy and independence – that we guard our opinions, and in most cases, the full extent of our personalities and soul from being seen, and in many ways prevent the relationship
from going deeper as time goes on.

Men, believing that women know the way, will follow our lead in the relationship. Then, we either lead them further into the heart of relationship, or keep it in the comfortable holding pattern of the head.

So what do men need?

They need what women need: love, companionship, all the good stuff you dream of in a relationship. With one difference: Men respond to a woman on a simple and basic level. And then they do something about it. You may call this “following their dicks,” but I call it “following their guts.”

They don’t stop to think whether you’d make a good mother for their children or a great companion when they get older, or whether you have enough power and prestige in the world or make a great living. They trust themselves. They
trust their instincts. They believe in their abilities to know when you’re the “one,” and once they’ve found you, it’s
difficult to talk them out of it. Once they’ve committed to you, they’ll tolerate a whole hell of a lot to stay with you.

Women, on the other hand, tend to make decisions about men. We check them out, are attracted to things about them other than our response to them and how we feel about ourselves in their presence, and then talk ourselves into and out of relationships.

And this is only healthy men and women. Men and women who are bent on hurting themselves and using a relationship to do a good job of it find each other. And still, women will talk themselves in and out of the relationship, at all stages, while men will stay until they can’t get what they want, which in this case is unhappiness.

That kind of relationship is what’s called codependent, where both parties are glued to each other by a mutual need to punish themselves.

A man who goes into a relationship looking for selfpunishment and then changes, and finally realizes he would rather be happy, will still often stay in the relationship, withdrawing rather than leaving, until the woman throws him
out (and often into the arms of another woman) by rejecting him.

A woman who goes into a relationship looking for self-punishment and then changes, and finally realizes she would rather be happy, will often leave, no matter how scary it is and how alone she might be after leaving.

How did we get where we are?

Can you remember what it was like the moment you laid eyes on your husband or boyfriend, or last romantic partner?

Were you instantly attracted? Was he?

Was there no romantic attraction at all, but a warm, friendly feeling?

Did you feel more than he did at first? Or was it the other way around? Or did you both make a beeline for each other?

These questions are about chemistry, one of the many aspects of relationship over which you have little or no control.

There is considerable research about romantic chemistry. The short version is that we are romantically and sexually and emotionally attracted to men and women who are somewhat like our fathers and mothers, and enough not like our fathers and mothers.

This involves looks, personality, pheromones (invisible particles of smell that figure crucially throughout the entire animal kingdom,) voice, and indefinable spiritual qualities. Pheromones match up to what your used to, to what gives you instinctive feelings of home and comfort, with just enough touch of the exotic and unknown.

Though friendships may change to romance, and romance to love, and friendship, romance and love may die, chemistry is a mystery when you’re caught in it.

If a man is “into” you, he’s “into” you. And if he isn’t, he isn’t. Just knowing this one truth is powerful. Our men are with us because they are “into” us. Men will keep calling, jump over obstacles to find us and get to us if they want us. And men usually know what they want right away.

What we choose to do about that is the only control we have over our romantic destinies. If we can learn to accept that power, instead of trying to make our men over into some image we have in our heads, everything in our relationships
will change.

Is it really the wayward leaf that’s so upsetting? Or the idea that we are in a relationship with another human being who is not actually under our direct control? That we are completely powerless to change anyone in our lives but ourselves? Is it the leaf that’s so offensive, or is it that it’s easier to complain about the leaf over there than to look inside ourselves for our real feelings?

I remember all those dark nights lying in bed next to a man I thought I hated. It took a momentous, shockingly quick turnaround to love for me to see I was just afraid. I was afraid, to use the forest analogy, that inside I was just rotting
bark.

I was afraid I didn’t know how to stand up for myself, didn’t know how to feel, didn’t know how to speak. He seemed to me a tree I couldn’t depend on to keep me from harm, from danger, from getting lost. I didn’t trust myself enough to keep myself from harm, from danger, from getting lost. So there was no way I could trust him!

But love and relationship is supposed to be about going into the forest. We’re supposed to expand ourselves – the sum of the two of us together is greater than just two.

We’re supposed to take each other, accompany each other, support each other through the woods – not hold each other back.

Why else but out of fear are we so willing to sacrifice the forest for a twig?

For now, let’s treat this forest sacrifice as a habit. A series of habits constructed by us to distract us from the scariness and depth of the woods. Are we afraid we’ll get lost in it? Lost in love? Do we choose men who have no business
being in a gorgeous forest with us so that we can stay firmly attached to one tree? Are those men and those restricted
relationships all about safety? A way to fend off the demands of intimacy?

Though we feel called to find our soulmate, what if ours is standing right in front of us? What if it’s we who are afraid?

We who are waving around our macho bravado, yelling “Do this, do that” and trying to take charge?

Choice is completely different from control.

Much of this book will be about defining that difference, and showing you how your life and your relationship will flourish once you give up control and begin making choices.

Control is pretty much trying to change something or someone else. Most of us live our lives believing that this change we want to make will make us happier.

We also believe that what we have in mind for the other person or situation is good for them, too, and that it’s
truly what we want.

Yet, from experience, we all know this is not the case.

“Be careful what you wish for” is a saying we’ve all heard.
And it’s true.

Do you remember a time you were successful in changing someone’s behavior and it turned out badly?

That’s because we often think small. We’re looking at one tree in a huge forest and trying to change the shape of a
leaf.

If what we want is love, adoration, cherishing, care, affection, great sex, (the whole forest) why are we using all our power to get our men to take out the garbage (a branch)?

And we often do try with all our power, our might, our wits – any way we can – to get our way.

To change that one leaf we find so difficult to live with.