 As a dating and relationship coach, one of the common frustrations I hear from women, particularly when it comes to understanding men, centers around men who seem to struggle opening up emotionally. In fact, I probably would say that's one of the top five things women wished from men that they would open up emotionally. And I think before we lean into that how to do that, I think it's important to understand why this happens. Now, for those of you who follow my channel, I'm more of a personal development coach than actually a dating and relationship coach. And what I mean to say is I'm here to encourage individuals to do personal development, self-help and spiritual. Why? Because one of the fundamental causes of human beings being what I call emotionally constipated, and that was a friend of mine who shared that terminology with me. Some people call it emotionally unavailable. Some people call it emotionally frustrated. I like the term emotionally constipated. Is that typically a human being has experienced some sort of traumatic wound in their life. This is also known as childhood wounds and traumas or adult traumas that might cause them to stuff their emotions. In addition, men have been preconditioned to actually be more stoic and not even share their emotions because they were taught by sharing emotions that isn't very manly. Little boys are taught be a man, tough it out and so forth. So to understand that part of it is social conditioning, but really what causes most men to be that emotionally unavailable person that makes it difficult for them to open up is as I said earlier, childhood wounds and traumas or adult traumas. And this is true for women as well as men. This is one of the reasons why I highly encourage human beings to read this book called The Hoffman Process. The Hoffman Process, here's a copy of it. This is a book to heal your childhood wounds and traumas or if you want Google the Hoffman Process and go to their retreat center, there's one in Napa, there's one in, I think on the East Coast as well because this organization has a way of helping individuals find that peace within themselves to genuinely love on themselves, to really genuinely love on themselves. I know personally when I went in 2017, there was an experience I had where I felt, I experienced what felt like a blanket of self love. And given that the number one emotional health issue for most human beings is I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, I'm not likeable, we are thirsty, human beings are thirsty for a capacity to open themselves up emotionally and yet they struggle on the inside to get there. This is one of the reasons why, where the heck did I put my book? My book is What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway? A Journey of Personal Development, Self-Help in Spiritual Work. By the way, all the books I recommend are in the description below. Why I'm suggesting this is if you want to understand how to open up a man, ladies, then it starts by actually learning to open up within yourself. I can tell you as a coach, and I've worked with thousands of women, I have over 10 to probably 20,000 hours of coaching. By the way, if you want to schedule a discovery call with me, right there is a link. Check out a link to a free discovery call to see if working with a coach is right for you. Well, I share this with you is I will tell you women as much as they think they're good at emotional communication. Oftentimes, women might vomit their feelings or have diarrhea in the mouth when it comes to their feelings and not necessarily articulate in a way to be seen, heard, and understood. This is why human beings need a level of education when it comes to looking inside and more importantly, coming back to women. I would say there is a huge percentage of the female population that act as people pleasers that stuff their emotions. In fact, in many cases, some of these women are doormats and they're being taken advantage by women or by men, excuse me, and I'm here to encourage a more empowered approach to the process. But if you want to get a man to open up emotionally, then you have to recognize, or at least this is my invitation for you, that you might need to learn how to open up emotionally within yourself. You know, it's interesting in my private coaching, one of the exercises we do is a journaling exercise. And I can tell you, probably seven out of 10 women who do this exercise struggle mightily to actually express their emotions on what they want to feel in a relationship. Can you believe that? It's interesting, 70% of the women that work with me have difficulty actually writing down the types of emotions and feelings they want to experience in a relationship. And yet everybody walks around going, Jonathan, I know what I want, I know what I want, I know what I want. And yet when they go through this process, they find themselves going, oh my gosh, I really didn't have an understanding of who I am or what I'm all about. So I'm here to offer approach of, again, an invitation to do inner work. And hopefully by doing this work, you actually become more attuned to yourself by being able to ask better questions to determine to gauge a man's emotional maturity and also if he's compatible with you. In fact, one of the significant things I do in my private coaching is called radical honesty, pre-qualifying your prospect. Why is it important to do that? When you learn based on your personality what questions you can ask a guy, not can, are willing to ask a guy, you can gauge his emotional maturity. Is he emotionally constipated? Is he emotionally unavailable? Or does he have a capacity? He just needs a little bit of help. And I can certainly help you with that. And again, schedule a call with me to see if working with a coach is right for you. All right, so how do we get a man to open up emotionally? Well, I've got my trusty nose. I want to be candid with you. I Googled this out of curiosity and it's funny because a friend of mine had written an article that we had talked about years ago, this very same subject. And I go, hey, we'd already discussed this. I thought I'd pull out this information for this video. So number one, if these are some simple tips to get a man to open up emotionally, number one, I highly recommend paying attention to his body language, paying attention to his body language. Men and women alike demonstrate their feelings through their body language. Do you know communication is roughly 80 or 90% non-verbal? So it's fascinating how many humans believe that they're talking to someone when they're talking on the phone via text message, that they're actually having real dialogue. Yet when it's our facial expressions, our energy that even our pheromones and our hormones represent part of communication. And yet I talk to women so frequently, they go, I'm madly in love with the man. I've been talking to him on the phone for six months. They've never met him. You've been having communication but you really haven't heard the communication until you physically can see their body language. And by determining a person's body language, you then can do what I call mirror and matching. One of the things, and I learned this in sales years ago, mirror and matching is when somebody's body language is like this, you can mirror their body language so they can see how they're representing themselves by being a reflection of them. It's really important to pay attention to body language because that gives you an indication of how a man or a woman is operating in that moment. And in that particular case, you can start to connect with them if you do this technique called mirror and matching. If you want some help with it, do me a favor, Google mirror and matching plus sales and you can learn a little bit more of these techniques that salespeople use to actually feel like their prospective client is engaging with them. So pay attention to body language and then operate from a place of mirror and matching. Okay, number two, this is so hugely important. Most men who go through a divorce, say one of the fundamental frustrations they had in their marriage was feeling a lack of appreciation with their partner. Their partner actually appreciating them. Ladies, you've experienced this as well and men experience this as equal as you. Men don't oftentimes feel appreciated for their efforts. So if you can, by the way, I invite you to use these words instead of thank you. Thank you is something we say to the grocery store person. Thank you is something we say to random people. I say random people, now we can use thank you. I'm going to invite you to use different words. I want you to start to incorporate the words grateful, gratitude and appreciation. You know, my girlfriend said something to me the other day. She just really appreciated that I got up this morning and she's got a little shoulder problem and I got her ice pack for her so she could put it around herself. And she just simply said, Jonathan, I really appreciated you doing that. She didn't have to be asked, I just did it. Now, my point in bringing this up is when you use terms like grateful, gratitude, appreciation, these are powerful words that helps emotions within a human being. So that's my invitation for you to start sharing more appreciation. Number three, do fun things together. That's right, do fun things together. You know, again, I come back to how many women I communicate or reach out to coaching with me are in long distance relationships. They're in cyber relationships, thinking they're actually in a relationship with someone and yet men bond through social activities, hobbies, mutual interests. That's how a man genuinely bonds with another person. Certainly with their male friends, it's playing golf together, going fishing together, going to the car show. These are just some things that I'm gonna be doing recently or did recently and gonna be doing. That's how men bond. Well, it's the same ladies. I'm encouraging you social activities, hobbies, mutual interests and you can be the instigators of these events. I remember one year I was dating a woman and she said, hey, Jonathan, can we go do a hike up at the Hollywood sign? She instigated it and we had a great time. It was a great bonding experience. So doing social activities, hobbies, mutual interests is a great way. Do fun things together that allow you to connect because you know, how do I say this? When we're men, how we get into our body, our emotions is through the doing of things. Is through the doing of things. We don't connect through our body through the telephone. How's your day going? Did you have a good day? I hope you had a good day. Most human beings are having such benign conversation, surface level conversation. They're not going deeper, which will allow you to connect to a man and help him open up emotionally. Number three, four, do the things he cares about. Do those things. It's not about you love the opera and you want him to go with you to the opera. I'm here, I'm using that as an example, but I'm here to suggest do the things he cares about. Folks, let me bottom line something to you. I was watching a video the other day where someone said, if you really want to get to know another human being, you have to live with them. That's how you get to know someone. That's why my relationship, we now live together. We are getting to know each other at a deeper level. Well, if you want to get to know each other at a deeper level prior to moving in together, getting married, then you're going to have to do a lot of stuff together. Weekend relationships where you see each other once every other week, isn't going to build the deep roots of trust. The light, and by the way, trust is the most critical component of a relationship because trust isn't just about someone's fidelity. Trust is, does this person care about my feelings as much as I care about my own? In other words, does this person have my best interest at heart? And the way you're going to get there is through social activities, hobbies, doing things together, doing and doing the things he cares about as well. And that's number four, doing the things he cares about. You have to do stuff together. Number five, don't make assumptions when it comes to men. Oh my God, this is driving me nuts. So many women are saying, Jonathan, why don't men think the way I do? It's because ladies, you have a vagina and we have a penis. We think differently. We operate differently. Why are you expecting men to be, or why are you expecting men to be shaven versions of you? I mean, men are hairier creatures. So you're expecting a shaven version of you. Don't make assumptions when it comes to men. Be more direct. If you have something to say, be direct. Men can't stand that you have this expectation that we're mind readers for you. Be direct. Don't make assumptions when it comes to men. Ask more direct questions. And lastly, if you want to get a man to open up emotionally, then you're gonna have to lead by example. I think of my dear friend, who was in a relationship for four years with a woman who constantly led by example with her feelings. And I can say, my friend was more of a stoic type of man. Great guy, true mention in the world, but stoic. It was through her leading by example, leading by example by expressing her feelings, expressing her feelings, expressing her feelings. Was he able to start tapping into his own feelings? If you haven't read the book, Emotional Intimacy by Robert Masters, I highly recommend checking this out. Because ladies, many of you think you understand emotions. I can tell you, probably less than 3% of the human population actually understands their own emotions in a healthy, happy way. So if you wanna shift the narrative, then maybe learning about your individual emotions and then being more expressive with it in a, by the way, I'm a big proponent of speaking your truth, doing it with kindness, doing it with kindness is a great way to get a man to open up more fully to you. Look it, the passive dating process today is not going, people aren't going anywhere in this passive casual world. I'm here to promote something more radical. I'm here to say, look, ladies, before the penis gets to go inside the vagina, you need to establish your standards in a relationship. If you want to be in a healthy, happy relationship, then set your standards and set your boundaries rather early. In fact, this is one of the reasons why I created my dating vows. If you haven't seen it before, by the way, the dating vows is in the description below. Because have you ever heard the phrase, women are the gatekeepers of sex and men are the gatekeepers of commitment? So if you want to be in a committed relationship, I invite you before you get physically intimate with someone, then you establish your standards. And here's a sample of one. Each person says the following. I, Jonathan, agree to explore the process of getting to know you with the intent to declare something serious within three to six months. I agree to be monogamous sexually while we're having regular sex together. I agree not to actively seek to meet and date others while we're in the dating process, including taking down my dating profile. I agree to speak up if this isn't working for me versus pulling back, ghosting or disappearing. And lastly, I agree to invest regular time in the process to get to know you, which looks like spending three or four days and nights a week together, doing shared activities, hobbies, mutual interests, spending time with family and friends, traveling together, teamwork, building skills, both in our personal, our professional life, intimacy, both physical and emotional intimacy, that leads to maybe moving in together, getting married. These are the exact vows I said to my sweetheart. Okay, I think she was pretty grateful that I was more intentional. Listen, I know you love the idea that you can just sit back in your feminine energy and let a man claim you, but here's the problem with the dating process today. Men, what's that old saying? And I know some women, people get pissed off of this. Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free? Look it, sex is so freely given today. It's so freely given today that men have made about this much of a commitment to a person. If you wanna shift the narrative, then you have to be in charge of your relationship destiny. And if you wanna get a man to open up and emotionally, then start reading the books that I keep talking about habitually with men. And I gotta tell you something, I had a guy send me a message on YouTube just yesterday said, Jonathan, I've been following your channel. I have sent your channel to my girlfriend because everything you're saying resonates with me. Ladies, a small percentage of men will agree to the dating vows. A majority won't, but guess what? Those guys aren't serious anyway. And if you want a serious relationship, then stand up in your power, lead by example, take charge of your relationship destiny, be in your empowerment, because guess what? It's not a fair world out there. I know you all like, I deserve love, I deserve, no, nobody deserves shit. If you want something to happen in your life, then you have to make it happen for yourself. The fantasy is over. Wake up and smell the coffee. All right, I'm done pontificating right now. Listen, has this resonated with you if it has, please let me know, hit that like button. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel if you're brand new. If you wanna connect with me, check out the links below to whether a discovery call with me or my group or even follow me on Instagram or purchase my books. All right, I think this will be a great place to wrap up our video today. I'm gonna do it as I always do. First off, giving myself a big, gigantic shot to bear a hug of self-love. I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm asking you to turn to someone, a pet, a teddy bear or a pillow, and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives.