 So how should a woman treat a man? We're gonna talk about five powerful keys. Now, let me just be clear. I don't like the word should. And let me also say that this goes both ways, how a man should treat a woman as well. Now I got this title from one of my contemporary, Stefan Speaks. And while I didn't watch the video, I have no idea if there's any similarity. I just liked the title and I thought we would dive into this conversation. Now what's interesting, before we get into this, I do wanna say that I wished I could go out ladies for those watching. I wish I could be there for you on a first date. And what I mean to say is wouldn't it be great if you could have someone ask all the right questions, find out about his past relationships, find out about his intentions, find out about his seriousness. You know, it seems to me that a true matchmaker finds people not based on physical attraction, but finds them on genuine compatibility for one another. Like really the ability to blend lives together and ignite that with chemistry. Wouldn't that be great? I'm thinking about starting a service where the minute you begin dating someone, they actually have to go through a telephone call with me more than one probably. Just to see if they are worthy for your attention because the reality is, is do you realize why most relationships fail? Most people aren't familiar with the work of John and Julie Gottman, but the Gottman, John Gottman wrote a book called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. And while I get the title as marriage, we can take out the word marriage and replace it with relationships why relationships don't work. And you might be thinking, well, how does this relate to treating someone? This is critically important because it's important to know why relationships don't work out, to actually know what to do to make it work, to make this person wanna give you everything, both of you wanting to give each other everything. Now, within the book, and by the way, all the books I recommend are listed below, is the concept called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And you can look this up under John Gottman, but I'm gonna recite them for you right now. Contempt, criticism, stonewalling and defensiveness. Contempt, criticism, stonewalling or defensiveness. Now, why is important to recognize this because this is oftentimes what happens when you pass through the honeymoon stage of a relationship. The honeymoon stage is the lust, the limerence, it's that infatuation, it's that excitement, it's that desire to want to physically to connect with someone. And yet, the level of a person's emotional maturity is absolutely related to these four areas of emotional well-being. So what is contempt? This is where you think you're better than someone. Whether you're a man or woman, we do have this arrogance and this totally relates to the first powerful key. This relates to the first powerful key for getting someone how you should be treating one another in the early stage of dating. So coming back to contempt is that belief that you're better than someone. For the most part, that's what contempt is. And there are times where we might feel like we're better than our partner or whatnot, but for the most part, that's an unhealthy way to approach the early stages of dating with a sense of contempt. Number two, criticism. Criticizing a person for their choices, criticizing a person for even where they pick dinner. Criticizing the way they treat people, when you begin to criticize someone, it wears them down. I hear this habitually for those of you that have experienced narcissistic relationships where criticism was a way of deflating your self-worth, your self-esteem. And unfortunately, this seems to be rampant within relationships and it could be minor criticisms versus something major, but certainly it's important to recognize that. Number three, I said stonewalling. You know, it's interesting when I was growing up, my mother would emotionally abandon us in the family whenever she was upset with my father, my brother, my sister, myself. Whenever she was upset, she would emotionally abandon us for roughly about 72 hours. And as a child, this war on me thinking, what did I do wrong to upset my mom? See, now she was processing her feelings and it took her 72 hours, but in that space, she's leaving everybody, you know, some people will go even much further than that period of time. They'll stonewall diving into the deep issues that occur within a relationship or altogether avoid dealing with the deeper parts of the relationship and that's another form of stonewalling. And last, not least is defensiveness. It's rather human nature to get defensive whenever we feel like we're being attacked. See, the challenge is most humans don't have good communication skills. They haven't learned NVC. You're not familiar with the work of Marshall Rosenberg. I highly recommend checking out this book called Nonviolent Communication. Now, this should have been titled Compassionate Communication. Why is this so important to understand this because defensiveness is directly related to the feeling of being attacked as if you've done something wrong. And instead of listening to the person, acknowledging the person and then addressing it in a compassionate way, we oftentimes get defensive and then we go into criticism, we go into contempt, we go into stonewalling, all of this, and this is why it's known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Now, the reason why I brought this to your attention as part of this video is to be aware of where your relationships most likely will fail. So how do we get it? So now you're aware of this, right? You're aware of this, okay? And I invite you to do more work on it. Study the videos on YouTube related to this, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So how should a woman treat a man? How should a man treat a woman? This is a two-way street. And first and foremost, in the early stages of dating, I wanna invite everybody to operate from what's known as beginner's mind, beginner's mind. See, beginner's mind is treating, I think it represents a level of respect. And what I mean to say is anybody who's ever hurt you in the past shouldn't be on the forefront of your consciousness as you're beginning to form a relationship with another human being. This is a completely different person. Now, they could be exactly like your last person because you ever heard the definition of insanity, doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results. Sadly, we as humans have a propensity to choose people just like our last partners. So we don't have this beginner's mind because we're attracting the same thing over and over again. By the way, my coffee mug says, don't make me go all psycho roommate on you. For those who know, I can get rather amped up on this conversation. Beginner's mind is simply starting fresh with everybody. Starting fresh, even when you have disagreements, starting fresh, my parents who were married 66 years before my mother passed away, had dear friends, one couple, and they said, we always resolved our differences before we went to bed. That way they could wake up with beginner's mind in their relationship and not holding on to grudges, not holding on to contempt, holding on to criticism, holding on to things. I invite you all to have a beginner's mind. Number two, I think this is critically important for both men and women in relationship to have an agreeable nature without being a doormat. I'm gonna repeat that, an agreeable nature without being a doormat. The challenge with those of us in midlife, this is the struggle we face, is the older we get, the more set we are in our ways. And we like doing things our own way. We each have our own way of doing things. And so this is where a lot of friction occurs in relationships, it might be the way you go to the gym, it might be the way you go out to dinner, it might be the way you make the bed, whatever it is. In a healthy relationship, it's important to have an agreeable personality, especially when you're planning to do things together. Now again, I'm not here to suggest being a doormat. This is not about abdicating your sovereignty. I want you all to remain in your power. And if you're not familiar with my book, what the heck is self-love anyway? A journey of personal development, self-help and spiritual work. It's a path to entering into a space of loving myself in a place of your sovereignty, because when you are present and agreeable, and both, by the way, this is true for men too, men are not off the hook here, ladies. I am not here giving men any, this isn't about men are better than women and women are better than men. Okay, let me be clear about that. Two agreeable personalities tend to work better. Now, this is where, but Jonathan, I was just watching a dating coach and he told me that women must submit to men. Submission is the powerful key. By the way, I'm speculating here. I am not a big fan of submission. I'm a big fan of mutual agreements within relationship to voice your desires and allow them to voice your desires and find agreements with one another. This is where I'm not a big fan of the one up, one down type of relationships that are being espoused significantly out in the dating and relating universe of advice out there. Number three, playful, being playful, along with it being sensual as well. I think the whole fruit, I want you to imagine, I love watermelon, I don't know about you, I love watermelon, I love cantaloupe, I love pineapple. I love just diving into fruit and feeling the juice just run down my lips. It's just something savory about playfulness, about sensuality and allowing our sensuality to come out, allowing our playfulness to come out. Sadly, humans are so deeply wounded that they're in a tug of war with the opposite sex. And since my audience is heterosexual, I'm saying the opposite sex, but there's this tug of war. It's men's fault, it's women's fault. We are not being very playful with one another and I'm not suggesting being a child either. I mean, we have to be grownups in relationship, but remember, playfulness and sensuality is the juicy parts of a relationship and to make time for play, make time for sensuality, sex, if you will, physical intimacy and certainly make time for emotional connection. That's what it's all, what's the point of being in a relationship if you can't be your true self with another human being? That's to me, the whole point of being in a relationship with someone or one of the many points. Okay, number four, intentionality, intentional, excuse me, intentional. Folks, ladies, I want you to recognize we have a backward system of dating. We hyper focus on attraction, chemistry and romance, which is the honeymoon phase and what's missing is the vetting stage, the vetting stage. Now within vetting, I want you to recognize being intentional means treating this budding relationship as a team with one another, that's being intentional. But Jonathan, I'm just supposed to sit back in my feminine energy and let a man lead. He's in charge of making all the decisions in the early stage of dating. No, if you want a healthy partnership in the future, then begin with partnership skills in the beginning, be intentional about making sure that you share the same values with one another. Make sure your lifestyles are blendable with one another. And make sure that you're on the same page when it comes to emotional maturity. Sadly, this is my emotional maturity relationship skills chart and this is not a fact, it's merely an opinion. I believe 20% of the population has clinical issues. And while I stay here 20% and this is, by the way, when I say 20%, I'm saying men and women. This isn't one-sided, ladies. And when I say 20% are healthy, and when I say 20% are healthy, I'm being rather generous. Most everybody is dysfunctional with their relationship skills and emotional maturity. So it's imperative to be aware of these if you want to have a powerful relationship with someone in the future. And number five, this is actually near and dear to my heart. It's called compliments and acknowledgement of efforts, it should break these up into two, change this to six. Do you realize that women get a gazillion compliments in a day? Oh my God, you look so beautiful in that dress. Oh my God, your hair looks wonderful. Oh my gosh, you look fantastic. Men get this many compliments in a day. Believe it or not, as much as men resist compliments, we want to be complimented. Now, there are certainly some men who are unable to receive compliments. I get that. There are men out there that are so stoic, they're so most likely wounded, they're unable to receive. But at the end of the day, say the word handsome. You're cute, you're handsome. Give a guy a compliment for what he's wearing. Give a guy a compliment. And acknowledgement of effort, and acknowledgement of efforts is along the same lines as a compliment. Acknowledge his efforts. Wow, I really appreciated that you picked that restaurant. I really loved it. Acknowledge the efforts and validate. See, that's what all this is. It's about validating a person for being important to you. When you compliment them, when you acknowledge them for their efforts, you acknowledge, you validate them for being good. And by the way, I said, men should be doing this as well, ladies, this isn't a one-sided dynamic. You know, believe it or not, it's the small stuff that matters most in a relationship. It's the little things that matters most in a relationship. And when we actually approach this process of dating, mating, and relating with a greater sense of awareness, first, be aware of where problems lie. So you're better prepared. And again, read the books that I recommend. Understand the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In addition, ask yourself, do you operate from a beginner's mind? Do you have an agreeable personality or are you kind of a prickly person? I've met women who are prickly. They are no fun to be with. Seriously. Are you playful? Are you sensual? I bet you a lot of you think you are. I'd be, you'd be surprised how many of you actually don't show up that way. And this is true for men as well. Well, men dive into sex too quick or rather quickly. Being intentional, we are swimming in a sea of a non-intentionality in the dating marketplace. I'm here to encourage being intentional, operate as a team as you're getting to know one another. And lastly, compliment and acknowledge one another because it is through our validations that we want to come back for more. And these are just some simple or powerful tools to use going forward so you can have a juicy, delicious relationship like that fruit I was talking about biting into that fruit. And my hope is this video had value for you. If it did, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Post a comment below. I'd like to hear what you think of it. I do my best to read all the comments in the first 24 hours. Also, this video was shot for my group called Midlife Love Mastery. There's a link below to join my group. This is where you get advanced videos that I shoot for YouTube. And if you've gotten this far on this YouTube video, if you like this video, please hit that like button. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel and hit that notification bell so you can be notified of new videos. I'm gonna wrap up this videos I always do. First off, give myself a big gigantic Jotham Barak 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 pillow. Give it or 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. Thanks a bunch. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.