Why she makes no sense in arguments (and soon you won't care) | 219
A model of women that actually makes sense
(Audio version of this article on Spotify, Apple, and other podcast apps.)
My wife is asleep.
My kids are asleep.
The house is quiet.
I’m reminded of this poem by William Carlos Williams:
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
A couple reached out to me recently for help.
They both had done a ton of personal development.
Very self-aware.
As good communicators as you could ask for.
But they were still missing each other.
It showed most obviously in the bedroom— their sex life had tanked.
(A symptom. Not the problem itself.)
They didn’t know what to do.
The guy especially, felt he was doing all the right things.
But she still felt disconnected. He felt growing resentment.
So what was left but to throw up his hands a la Jordan Peterson…
When you are doing everything you know to do, but not getting desired results, the problem usually is your mental model.
(That goes for everything.)
So I drew them a new model that I’ve always found to be useful:
Jung’s Quaternio
Jung theorized that in any intimate relationship there are four entities:
Man’s Conscious (Ego)
Woman’s Conscious (Ego)
Man’s Unconscious (“Soul” or Anima)
Woman’s Unconscious (“Soul” or Animus)
These 4 entities make up six unique relationships:
A) Her Ego - His Ego: Conscious observable relationship.
B) Her Soul- His Soul: The unconscious feeling relationship. Determines all the feels including emotional patterns and sexual attraction.
C) His Ego- Her Soul: He interacts with her masculine unconscious
D) Her Ego-His Soul: She interacts with his feminine unconscious
E) Her internal Ego-Soul relationship
F) His internal Ego-Soul relationship.
Most relationship advice only looks at Relationship A (Conscious-Conscious):
Communicate better. Make time for each other. etc. etc.
But we really care about Relationship B (Unconscious-Unconscious)— how we feel about each other.
In the beginning (honeymoon phase), the Relationship B usually is rewarding—
Reproductive hormones (and often romantic projections) make us get close.
But when those hormones fade, our unconsciousness’s reveal their wounds.
It’s usually marked by the a couple’s first real argument.
That’s when things get real.
And you’re a man who wants a fulfilling long term relationship,
Relationship C (His Conscious - Her Unconscious) is the most important.
It allows you to navigate inevitable disagreements.
It sets the underlying emotional tone for the whole relationship.
It’s also where you earn your keep as a husband, father, and head of household.
For it’s where you learn to handle what Jung termed the Animus—the “masculine” aspect of a woman’s unconscious.1
If you understand the Animus, you’ll get what most guys don’t, such as
Why many couples drift apart even when everything is objectively great
Why it can seem hard or impossible to please her
Why doing everything she says actually makes her more annoyed
And yes, why women make no goddamn sense in arguments
Once you know how to handle her Animus, you can bring order and intimacy back to your home.
And be the happy genius of your household.
Meet her Animus
When I was a young man starting to date in New York, many of my male peers noticed a pattern:
Around 6-8 weeks of dating, a woman who initially said she was okay with casual dating, suddenly wouldn’t be.
She’d demand commitment.
Many guys I knew called it the “timebomb.”
With some women it seemed like a total change in personality.
Even women who claimed to not want commitment at first, would eventually have this change of heart.
In a way, it was a different personality—
A different aspect of her.
The part of a woman that is her protector, her advocate.
Her Animus.
It (he) has all the characteristics of a neurotypical man—likes to argue, defend, wants control, can get righteous when he feels threatened.
Which brings us the our big point…
Why women make no sense in arguments:
I’ll let a woman speak first on the subject…
One of Jung’s proteges, Marie-Louise von Franz, had a lot to say about the Animus in arguments:
“Animus possession may take the form of criticizing everybody and everything—and the damnable thing about the animus is that he is quite right but likely to be wrong in the specific situation.”
(Animus and Anima in Fairy Tales, p. 36)
“One can seldom contradict the animus, for it (he) is always right; the only problem is that his opinion is not based on the actual situation.”
(Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche, p. 279)
The Animus in most women is like a young man living inside a windowless tower.
He doesn’t act on direct information. He goes off of what her ego “tells” him—via her feelings.
Like a high school debate team, the Animus comes up with rationale to defend the argument its been given. It doesn’t question the validity of the argument itself.
So she says things that sound right, but aren’t sound.
Most women are likely to argue things that are contradictory or seem irrelevant (to the male ego).
Hence most guys feel they have to throw up their hands like Jordan Peterson.
Let me be clear…
The takeaway here is NOT that this is why women are nuts.
It’s to correct your mental model so you don’t get confused, butthurt, or frustrated when your emotional woman doesn’t behave like a rational man.
Because even if/when her Animus nags, complains, says seeming batshit,
she’s still actually communicating something important.
You just have to translate it.
A general rule that I always say to any guy in conflict with his woman:
Do not take what she says literally
Do not take what she says literally
Do not take what she says literally
I repeat it so you’ll remember.
(I need the reminder often too.)
Rather, look past her words, and recognize the need she’s expressing.
Most women are great at sensing needs (emotional mechanism),
but not so good at articulating them (logical mechanism).
If you have kids, you can see this clearly.
I’m frequently astounded how my wife can sense the needs our kids.
The more she can be in that high-feeling, wordless, “feminine” state,
the better mother she is, the more attractive she is, the more enjoyable our relationship.
The more her Animus can be quiet, the more her better nature can come out.
The thing is, no woman wants to operate from her Animus.
All women would prefer to be in their feminine most of the time.
The Animus comes out of necessity— when her safety
But they will only do so if certain conditions are met…
How to Retire her Animus
In Macbeth, the witches speak in a way that one must “read between the lines.”
Macbeth doesn’t. He takes their words literally.
And suffers for it.
Such is the fate of men who only look at the content and miss the context.
“Reading between the lines” is fairly easy if you can resist the temptation to respond to her literal words.
Rather than saying, “how could she say this ridiculous/contradictory/hurtful thing”
ask, “what is she really saying?” or “what’s making her feel this way?”
Even if you have the social awareness of a doorknob, you’ll be surprised at how accurate your guesses are if you just pay attention to context over content.
I will sometimes literally translate what she says into the words that I would say in that situation.
Then I respond as if she said that.
A funny thing often happens when you either call out or respond to the words she didn’t say.
She (often) will calm down.
Her Animus recognizes that you are really feeling her.
So it doesn’t need to defend her anymore.
Peace.
~Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions)
In my experience, most women will drop their previous argument once its clear you’re feeling her.
It’s like her Animus just said,
“Cool, I’m going to take a nap. Call me if you need me again.”
Once her Animus (and animosity)2 is calm, you do not need to rub it in, nor prove yourself right.
The way to lock in the victory, is to encourage her femininity out again.
That requires a counterintuitive approach.
Because it leans on a truth few men understand:
Women tend to live up to your projections
Arguably this is true for all people in certain contexts.
We tend to conform to the identity projected on to us by whomever we see as our emotional authority.
When you were a kid, that was your parents.
Most of us then internalize our parents’ projections as adults.
(That’s the crux of Transactional Analysis covered in Freedom From Shame.)
Even as a grown man, if you emotionally trust/look up a certain leader, mentor, or even community, your self-concept will be pulled towards what they project onto you.
In a healthy (polarized) man-woman relationship,3 that means she is more likely to change her behavior to match how you choose to see her, than any convincing or negative reinforcement.
If you see her as a Crazy B, she will inevitably be a Crazy B.
If you see her as a Loving Sweet Woman (who isn’t perfect and that’s okay), she will be that. And “correct” herself back to that identity quickly when given the chance.
In a way, you’re helping guide Relationship E—Her internal Ego-Soul relationship.
In other words, how she sees herself.
Actually, how in her feminine she with you can be estimated by how much she conforms to your projections.
Women want to be contained by a man willing and able (competent enough) to do so.
She wants to retire her Animus.
She wants to be with a man who projects the best version of her onto her.
All the nonsense arguments are tests on the road there.
On those other internal relationships…
Yes, there are 3 other relationships in the Quaternio.
But if you handle her Animus well, they mostly take care of themselves:
A) While all the “on paper” stuff matters, if a woman really feels handled well, superficial things become less important.
If anything, many women will change their proposed values to justify being with a man who makes her feel really safe and secure.
An ex of mine used to say, “a well-fucked woman doesn’t care about politics.”
I have to agree.
B) Handling Relationship C covers half of this one.
D) The state of your unconscious Anima matters too.4 But how she treats your feelings is mostly dependent on Relationships C & E
F) This is it’s own beast—see below.
When we open to another, we are giving them the keys to affect our self-esteem in a huge way.
Relationship D (how your unconscious are treated) is also a key part of happy longterm relating. You can make her happy and sweet, and still be resentful and checked out in the process.
That will be the subject of a later article/episode.
The idea being that all humans have the templates for all human expression within our unconscious. But only certain aspects will come to the surface as part of our outward personality. (i.e. “masculinity” in a man, “femininity” in a woman.)
But the counterparts (femininity in a man, masculinity in a woman) still exists in our unconscious—we carry them to help us navigate dealings with the opposite sex. Therefore they tend to “show” themselves in our intimate relations…
I had to look this up… animus and animosity do have the same etymological root. Both come from the root ane- “to breathe” > “life force/soul” (animus) > “boldness” > “hostility” (in Old French)
Women also have a great ability to affect men via projection, but it’s less about thinking/words, and more about feeling/actions. I’m going to post another article on that later. But her projections are still downstream from how she feels around you, which leads us back to the point of this article.
Another article on making sure your needs are met in relationship is coming soon.
Would you say that you're playing a finite game or infinite game with respect to male-female relationships?