172: unHIDDEN Book Reading Chapter 16

As the world changes, so is the dynamic of how we create relationships. When it comes to the relationship between men and women, what worked for men before do not anymore work today. Women do not need men the way the society thinks they did. They are now more in charge of their choices and confidently seeking beyond what the world expects of them. Exploring into this changing relationship is Rob Kandell who gives a book reading of his book, unHIDDEN: A Book for Men and Those Confused by Them. Tackling Chapter 16, “How to Relate to Women?”, he gives men some pointers to men who wants to interact with the modern woman. He offers viewpoints on how to end the antagonistic war that men are currently fighting with women. Rob digs deep into where presence comes into play as well as confidence, vulnerability, desire, humor, and curiosity.

I recovered barely from my twelve-hour book launch that happened on December 6th. It was an amazing experience, 36, twenty minutes, lots of guests and it blew my mind of all the love, connection, and super fun. If you’re interested in finding out more about that, you can go to RobertKandell.com/launch and it will show you the twelve hours of video, four three-hour Facebook streams that are available with some incredible guests. Some spoken word, Morgan and her friend Gillian did ASMR, which is whispering for the book launch they read on unHIDDEN. There are incredible guests like Eva Clay, Connor Beaton and amazing people on there. I also did a book reading as part of it. I’m still catching up with my life after this epic experience. For this podcast, I’m going to give you a book reading. That is the experience reading Chapter Sixteen: How to Interact with a Modern Woman? I have some incredible guests coming up. Michelle Masters who is an NLP master practitioner, Dr. Robert Glover of No More Mr. Nice Guy coming. There are incredible things. Please enjoy my reading of Chapter Sixteen for unHIDDEN: A Book for Men and Those Confused by Them, which is available on Amazon or you can go to RobertKandell.com/Book. That will show you how to interact with it. Thank you so much as always for all your support. I love you and enjoy.

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unHIDDEN: A Book for Men And Those Confused by Them

Robert Kandell reads, unHIDDEN: A Book for Men and Those Confused by Them. It’s hard to pick one chapter that’s truly amazing. This is one of my favorites and one of the most important for men. This is Chapter Sixteen: Paying Quality Attention to a Woman. How to relate to women? When it comes to women, men are still following old scripts. While the world continues to evolve, what worked in the past is not working anymore. There is a whole new way to be. However, until men commit to change, relationships will continue to decline and people then will feel disillusioned. As discussed in the confront section, women’s power in the world is increasing and their relationship to you is changing. To put it bluntly, they don’t need you the same way their mothers and grandmothers did. Women no longer need a male partner to be financially solvent. They have their own career, savings and brokerage accounts. Women are forming stronger bonds with each other through groups and women empowerment movements. The sisterhood culture has always existed but in recent times had brought them together with stronger calls to action for them to be truly equal in today’s society.

When it comes to men, sex and porn, women are starting to push back overtly saying, “No, this is not how I want to be touched.” It’s a tough time to be a man. My proposed solution to this is to confront these issues head-on. This is no easy task. It will mean turning down the volume of your ego, listening and saying to the women in your life, “I want to learn.” It is admitting that you don’t know everything and you’re ready to understand how she specifically wants to be related to. It is the best time in our human history to be a man because we have the opportunity to interact with empowered women. However, in order to do so, we have to learn to stop relying on old scripts and to begin learning new ones. My viewpoint is that books like the one you are reading are a good start to your journey. To get to mastery, however, you need the attention of a powerful woman. She’ll be the one to educate you on the fine details of what she wants more than any man can do. It’s been my experience that women are thrilled to educate you but only if you approach them with humility, show enthusiasm and express gratitude.

The intention of this section is to offer viewpoints on how to end the antagonistic war that men are currently fighting with women. Please note that I’m not letting women off the hook for their contribution to the war. However, as this book is for men, my desire is for you to learn to change old generational habits and learn to relate in a collaborative nature. This may seem impossible at the moment but with practice, I have no doubt that you, a good man, can evolve and expand to make itself.

Ask questions, hear the answers. One quiet evening with a girlfriend named Justine, I asked what I thought would be a simple question, “What can I do better in our relationship?” While we had built our relationship on speaking the truth to each other, I was expecting something fun, light or even flirty such as, “Flowers, please. Take me out more. You could take my clothes off right now.” Instead, she looked at me directly and said, “I don’t like the way you kiss.” Her truth hit me like a punch in the gut. I lost my breath and my head started to spin.

Since I was a teacher of relationships, I had prided myself by being an expert in many matters of sexuality and in particular, I’m the most excellent kisser. Her expression that my kissing skills weren’t even likable ripped my heart from my chest. My feelings were hurt and my ego devastated. I then realized I had three options at the moment. I could disconnect, get on my high horse and punish her for her truth like, “You’re crazy. Every other woman liked my kissing. What’s wrong with you?” I chose the third door. “Okay,” I said evenly, “What don’t you like about it? What can I do better?” Her face, which had been neutral turned into a deep smile and she moved closer to me on our bed. She looked closely at my face, taking my eyes to make sure my quest for my information was sincere. She told me later that no man had ever received her speaking her raw truth and she was surprised. She was used to every other man, his fragile ego, which would have blocked her. She then took my face in her hands with warm fingers, angled my head slightly and leaned in close. I could smell the clean scent of her skin and breath as her lips came and make contact with mine. I responded by opening my mouth. She paused for a moment and quietly said, “Go slower. Yes, a little less tongue. Push your lips into mine and tease my tongue into your mouth.”

This pivotal moment in my life taught me several valuable lessons about women. First, they normally do not feel sufficiently spaced to tell them your truth. Second, I witnessed myself responding to a truth I didn’t like. Initially, I started to build up my defenses and accusations for my ego to protect myself. From what? The fact that my girlfriend didn’t like the way I kissed? No, it was a revelation that my image of myself as a quintessential lover wasn’t true. I didn’t want to confront my own feelings of inadequacy. Lastly, I learned that if I listened deeply that I could learn something and ultimately my entire life would improve. My sex life improved dramatically by my willingness to listen because I could hear more and more truth of what she wanted and she felt safer to live unhidden with me. It’s in the details. When most men meet a woman, they tend to look at the more overt aspects of her appearance. They might notice her hair, smile, smell, body type, including breasts and the derriere skin and overall personality. Men will see the attractiveness of a woman’s face but tend not to notice or remember the actual color.

Women, on the other hand, tend to recognize everything. They are trained to look at details such as your hair, your teeth, how your clothes match and fit you, your overall body language, accent, eyes and body shape. They’ll notice your shoes and whether they go with your outfit. They will all notice your eye color and whether or not you can maintain eye contact with them. They will also take an overall gauge of your presence and energetic state. Women notice significantly more than men do. It takes practice and acumen to start to notice the details of women. However, when you do, the reward for their enjoyment of feeling seen is well-worth your efforts. I am personally still working in my noticing skills. My standard tendency is to not notice the fine details of Morgan. I sometimes miss her haircuts but do the best to take in the whole picture. Women want you to acknowledge their clothes or on how they worked to enhance their attractiveness. At a minimum, notice and acknowledge the shoes. However, this is just the start.

Women want you to notice the details beyond the physical. They want you to notice their moods, energies and other subtleties. It’s important to look at this as a practice of a skill like any other and is on you to respectively ask the women in your lives to help you. The easier to make it for women to educate you, the more softly or ego response to their adjustments and the faster your education will occur. It’s hard on one self-esteem to be reminded of what you don’t notice about women but it’s better than not knowing at all. Be nice. When I asked my teacher, Victor Bronco, for a secret to a powerful relationship, he said simply, “Be nice.” When I attempted to get more details to fully understand this viewpoint, he recommended I do not complicate matters. Understand that when we treat people well, they tend to stay with us. The teacher then extended the viewpoint, “Being nice is telling the truth without anger.” To me, this means you’re willing to communicate what’s on the inside and you don’t want to imbue it with your own filter. I believe the nicest thing you can do in the world is to reveal yourself to another human being.

My personal commitment in my relationships is to speak the truth in the moment of disconnection with the least amount of charge. This process can be sound, sometimes logistically difficult, emotionally challenging, and downright scary. However, when you delay speaking your truth, that pain can easily increase, and the chasm of disconnection will expand exponentially over time. My choice is to confront an issue as soon as possible. Here’s an example of a pristine communication around a charged moment with Morgan and myself. Me, “Can we stop for a second? When you said you don’t care, I felt invalidated and unimportant in the conversation. I was surprised by it all.” Her, “I’m sorry. I can understand how the words could have you feel that way.” Me, “Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for apologizing. Would you let me know what your motivation was for saying you don’t care?” Her, “I actually meant I didn’t care if we went to that specific restaurant. I do care about going with you but just not that location.” Me, “Got it. I totally misheard that. Thank you for clearing it up.” Her, “I appreciate you asking for clarification.” Me, “My pleasure.” The result is connection from disconnection.

Instead of holding onto the impact of the miscommunication, I took the extra step to keep things clear. Therefore, avoiding a withheld valued judgment from rising between us. I had the option of imbuing my first comment with my own litany of pain and baggage with an accusing, “You did this.” I could have conflated every time another woman has said something that has me feel shame or brought them all into this communication. No, that’s my baggage. It’s responsible to speak my truth at the moment, in the present time without lumping her with an old wound. Being nice doesn’t mean your boundaries get trampled. If someone has a disconnection with you and they’re speaking to you with anger, I would recommend using a statement such as, “I completely want to understand your experience, but I cannot hear you right now. Would you be willing to be still for a couple of moments, so the anger can settle? Then we can start again.” However, being nice does mean to be willing to put your own agenda aside for a moment to connect with another person. It means being mindful of each element of your communication to ensure you are communicating with clarity. Being nice means choosing connection over being right.

unHIDDEN: Presence is simply a demonstration of a man’s solid belief in who he is in the world and how he shows up available, aware and conscious.

We spend a lot of time and energy ensuing we land on top of the ladder in most situations. The expert communicator is willing to let go of bullying to ensure his status, to make sure the other person feels heard and regarded. It means putting your ego aside in service to connection. Finally, be nice to yourself. We all have an internal critic whose dialogue is horrific most of the time. We beat ourselves up time and time again. In the following section, we discuss the habit of self-sabotage. Learn to take care of your most important resource, you. Presence. One night, Morgan and I were discussing some challenges she was having with the children. I listened intently and when she was finished, I started to give her feedback on what I noticed and what I thought we should do. While I was talking, I noticed her eyes constrict and her face move into a slight frown. I stopped immediately. Me, “Is there something wrong?”

Morgan, “I wanted you to validate my feelings.” Me, “My masculine got in the way there. I apologize. Please rewind. Let’s try that again.” I’ve heard the primary thing women want from men is presence.

This buzzword has been discussed by many self-development teachers. From my personal experience, this is the core of what women truly want. They want a man who could stand on his own two feet, feel into his body and be a solid place where they, the women, can be themselves. My definition of presence is simply a demonstration of a man’s solid belief in who he is in the world and how he shows up available, aware and conscious. A woman wants a container where she could feel safe to be fully who she is, and a man’s presence provides this for her. She wants to be able to emote her feeling, describe her sexual desires, speak her inspirations and feel free in her expression. If a man has presence, he can stand with her in full expression. David Deida wrote, “When a woman gets emotionally intense, a mediocre man wants to calm her down, discuss it or leave it and come back again when she is sane.” A superior man penetrates her mood with impenetrable love and unwavering consciousness. The pathway to this love is through building your own confidence and having your own form of self-validation. If your sanity rests in the woman, then your presence will waver with her ups and downs making it difficult to hold your center.

It is important to make one distinction. You are not responsible for your partner’s feelings. We often make statements like, “You hurt my feelings. Stop making me feel bad.” These are misleading, and we are always 100% responsible for our own emotions. We can choose how we react to someone else’s behavior. However, you are responsible for the impact you make on a woman with your actions. When you are present with a woman, you can start to notice the differences between the stimuli you provide and her reaction while focusing on making more deliberate communication. This is called keeping your side of the street clean. When a woman is what Deida calls her feminine storm, she wants you to stay strong and centered, to not take her feelings personally. I appreciate how this can be challenging when she’s angry and throwing barbs at you. However, the more presence you can hold, the stronger your core, the safer she will feel and the sooner her anger will dissipate.

Ironically, when women want you to feel available to hold all of who they are inside their emotions, they also want you to have a strong sense of vulnerability. They want you to be able to feel, discuss, and learn for the power of your emotions. Women are trained from birth to have emotional intelligence. Men under the hand are taught to treat emotion as a pariah. To have a successful relationship, a man must know how to feel his own feelings at the right time to put them aside when needed. It’s a challenging balance to understand and experience. To further complicate this dichotomy, women do not want to be your mother. They want the opportunity to feel materialistic feelings but on a very deliberate and rare occasion. Many men in today’s society had been described as another man-child by women with children. They do not feel met with a strong partner to run their household. They want you to be able to hold your own at the appropriate times, lean on them for support. Men who act like boys make assumptions that their partners will take care of things.

For example, I take out the trash without Morgan asking, not because I’m helping her but because I deemed that is both our jobs to keep the house clean. This is a subtle but important difference between the two with a ladder about creating and maintaining equality in our relationship. In her previous relationship, she had to remind her partner multiple times, which had her feel unconsidered. Men, be a hero. Take out the trash. Women also want the opportunity to be their sexual selves. In my experience, women’s appetite for sex is significantly larger than men’s. I believe in the following viewpoint. Women want sex more than men, just what’s not on the menu. We live in a society where men are still freer to be open with our sex, while women will face antiquated rules of puritan shame. The biases of society say that her desires are too much or slutty. Be the partner who deeply listens and says, “Yes, I approved all her sexual desires.” This doesn’t necessarily mean you actually have to engage in the practice. Be curious, your permission will free your sex life.

Men often will say, “I want a woman’s desire. I want her to always be turned on and then find out what this actually may mean.” It may differ from his desire and not include the threesomes, orgies and daily sex he was hoping for. Be ready for experiences you may never have dreamed of. Finally, women want to be understood. I appreciate how often men can find women confusing. Their minds and biology work very differently from yours. Their hormonal cycle, which you do not understand or comprehend, has a significant impact on their way of being. The wise man pays attention to when her cycles occurring, so he must best relate to her. Beyond biology, be curious about a woman’s mind. I often remind men to listen first and then speak. In our society, women are taught to be quiet. For men shows genuine interest in what she’s thinking, he’ll be rewarded with the greatest gift of her true self. These are challenging tasks to stand up inside of. Your success depends on your ability to be strong in the face of these challenges. Stand strong in your presence and know that deep down you’re a good man who is on a grand adventure. Invest in your ability to have a strong back, a warm smile, and expansive vulnerable heart.

Humor. Recently at a tail end of a workshop, I regaled Morgan with anecdotes for my communication, with the intention to make her laugh. It is my greatest joy to watch her attractive face, light up, see her eyes closed and for her to release an unexpected belly laugh. I spend an extraordinary amount of time watching and noticing her. Remembering little details and bringing the details I’ve noticed so she and I could share the absurdity and the richness of the life through laughter. It’s common knowledge that women like men who can make them laugh. Laughing is fun, releases endorphins and it’s been described as the best medicine. It’s wonderful to be around a funny person. For some, being funny may seem very challenging. However, we all have the ability to learn to notice life and make humorous comments about it. I’ve spent the last twenty years developing my humor skills by watching other people taking improv classes and improving my own skills. The power of humor is more than telling jokes. It’s an approach to every aspect of life when you acknowledged and enjoy your own humanity.

It’s hard to keep her sense of humor when life throws you curve balls but your ability to smile, shake your head, wink at God and continue moving through your challenges make life more enjoyable. Your partner will delight in you when you can make her laugh. Curiosity. It is a nature of being human that you’re instilled with a natural sense of curiosity. When you were young, the world was new, and you tested every aspect of it. You would touch things put objects into your mouth and get into so much mischief as you could out of innocent curiosity. As you get older, either you continue being curious or start to dissociate from this human attribute. Women love when you are curious about them. They tend to spend an inordinate amount of time working on themselves. For example, their parents and a man who notices this and ask questions will instantly win points.

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Chapter Sixteen, unHIDDEN. Thank you so much for listening to Tuff Love. This was a book reading from my book launch. We’re going to be back to our normalcy, whichever that means for me. Normalcy around shows, rants and guests. We’re going back strong with new ideas and concepts. Until then, thank you so much for all your support. Check out the book, podcast, writing, communication courses and other fun things at RobertKandell.com. Thank you so much and have a great day. I love you, bye.

Resources mentioned:

• RobertKandell.com/Launch
• unHIDDEN: A Book for Men and Those Confused by Them
• RobertKandell.com/Book

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