Femininity and Masculinity

The principle works both ways, and it doesn't matter who starts. The moment one person in a marriage starts doing the right things, the other eventually follows.

The single most important principle for building a relationship.

It works both ways equally, and it doesn’t matter who starts practising it first.

It goes like this: “When a woman behaves in a feminine way, a man responds by behaving in a masculine, attentive way. When a man behaves in a masculine, attentive way, a woman responds by being feminine and tender.”

It’s cause and effect, and it makes no difference which comes first — his attention or her femininity. Chicken and egg. The pattern is already there.

The moment a woman feels a strong, attentive man beside her, she can allow herself to act like a girl: to be playfully demanding, to be irresponsible (in the good sense of the word), to be beautiful and affectionate.

In exactly the same way, the moment a man starts to feel a gentle, loving, sensual woman beside him, he starts behaving courageously and with dignity.

I understand perfectly well how implausible, theoretical and naive this can sound. I’m not asking you to take my word for it. If you want, try putting the principle into practice and see for yourself.

And yes, I understand that for a woman to stop being anxious, demanding, on edge and worn down, a man has to create certain conditions. I know the reality of many families, where a woman works two jobs and still carries the household, the family and the children.

We chose our partner of our own free will. Now we have to work on the relationship.

The moment we start doing the right things, the behaviour of the person we love changes too.

If you disagree, then ask yourself: as a woman, would you shout at your husband and be angry with him if his behaviour changed radically for the better, if he genuinely started hearing and understanding you, if he started doing the things that make you happy?

A man’s behaviour towards you changes in exactly the same way the moment he has a feminine, loving wife in front of him.

But pride and being closed off stop people from being the one who takes the first right step.

Women write to me constantly: “Dima, I’ve tried everything — I was gentle, tender, kind, loving, I endured everything and accepted everything, but he was an unfeeling block of wood and he still is. He’s selfish and he’s just using me.”

Yet in 100% of cases in my practice, when we later sit down with that couple for a consultation, it turns out to be nothing like the way the wife saw it. Her “perfect” way of behaving turns out to have been completely off the mark, and her man felt bad next to her.

Men often tell me the same thing — that they did everything necessary and changed, and their wife still left them for someone else.

All I can do is show that husband that if he had genuinely been doing the right things, she would have been happy with him and would never even have thought about divorce. Nobody goes looking for better when they already have good.

So the moment one person in the family starts doing the right things, the other eventually picks it up. Because both of them want to be happy. Nobody starts a family in order to suffer in it and torment the person they love.

The problem is that people think they are doing the “right” things, when in practice they are doing foolish ones.

I looked through my records the other day, and it turned out that over the past two years I’ve held around 400 consultations. Not a single angel among them. All of them living people with their strengths and weaknesses. Pride keeps people from seeing their own weak points and only ever points at the flaws of the person they love.

So the one who steps in and repairs the relationship is the one who is wiser and the one who is less proud. And a few months later it’s an entirely different family.

Do you agree that when a woman behaves in a feminine way, the man beside her behaves in a masculine one? And the other way round?