Hello, John--

That's a great point--there is a need for the women in these situations to communicate their needs/wants.

I believe the theme of this post--and other posts you've written in response to this piece--is your belief that part of the problem is that women may not be doing a great job of communicating their needs/wants to the men.

Like JMH18, I would prefer to not call women 'psychotic' for failing to communicate in a perfect, optimal fashion, just as I'd prefer to not call men 'psychotic' for not realizing that what they're doing/not doing may be inadvertently harming their relationships.

Something to consider: The reason some women in these situations aren't doing a better job of communicating their wants/needs may not be 'because they assume the guys should know'. That old trope--that women expect men to read their minds--may be a problem in some situations, but perhaps we can expand to consider other reasons women aren't communicating their needs. As I described in this piece, sometimes these women struggled themselves to understand why they felt dissatisfaction in their relationships with 'good men'. They so fully realized that the men are good. And they definitely didn't want to be with bad men who treat them poorly. So they're stuck, confused, not knowing or understanding what's causing their discontent. It may be that an inability to identify the source of their discontent--rather than psychotic-ness, and rather than expecting men to read their minds--is why they're failing to communicate their needs/wants to these good men.

Take the hot chocolate example. If I don't know myself why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling, how can I communicate to you what I need you to do to help me? Indeed, in the hot chocolate example, I couldn't figure out why I was somehow bothered by it. I was busy 'scolding' me for being ungrateful. It took me a while to figure out that it was part of a pattern; the solitary incident of the hot chocolate gift wasn't a problem. I wasn't able to understand what the gift represented until I found the pattern. That's what it took for me to eventually realize what the problem was. Could I have done better at communicating ("Honey, I know I'm bothered somehow, but I don't know why.)? Yes. Was I psychotic or expecting him to read my mind for not telling him immediately "the hot chocolate made me feel sad, because I thought you would do something special for me"? I don't think so, but you're welcome to believe I was.

Indeed, as I wrote, some women recognize that the men already do so much that the women themselves aren't quite able to recognize the nuance--that he's doing a lot of generic good stuff for her rather than doing the specific things that meet her specific needs/wants.

So you can almost see a perfect storm: The women aren't communicating their certain feelings/needs--perhaps because they're not even aware themselves of what's causing their struggles--and the men aren't understanding why their massive efforts to be good men aren't making women willing to stick with them.

My hope is that an article like this will be read by both men and women. Perhaps they can both see, "Oh! That may apply to me and my relationships!" Perhaps then women will consider how to be better at communicating what they specifically want/need, and men will consider the suggestions I describe in "The Fix" section of this piece.

I definitely aimed this piece at a male audience to help them learn what they can try. This is written from the point of view of a man trying to learn why he might be having this problem. As you point out, there are surely things women can do better to improve these situations as well. He can do better about consciously trying to learn what she needs/wants--so can she. And she can do better at letting him know what she's feeling and needing--so can he.

I hope you'll be generous enough as a reader to be ok with my choices to narrow my writing down to a specific focus, such as helping men learn more about things they can try, and not fault me for not including everything that everyone can do. Lawd knows I'm already way too verbose. If I tried to include all suggestions that all people could take...whew. And I also hope you'll be generous enough to consider the possibility that I used the hot chocolate example as, well, an example. I didn't provide every detail -- such as how I handled it when I got the hot chocolate. I chose to focus on what was going on with the guy in this case rather than what women did/didn't do or what I women should/shouldn't have done. My hope is that you'll give me the forbearance of understanding that I can't include every detail, or that it's ok for me to not choose to present every detail but instead opt to only include the details that support the focus. And I so hope you--nor any reader--wouldn't diagnose others 'psychotic' for not communicating in an optimal fashion. We all have so much to learn, and even when we learn what might help, we may still fail to enact those things consistently though hopefully we can and will improve.

--Lee