Ellen told her side. "It began twenty years ago. I was only
twenty-four and I had known this man for three weeks and decided I wanted to
marry him. Three months later we were married."
"We were very similar, really. Ian's parents had divorced when he was fourteen,
and my father had died when I was eleven. So we were both raised by single parents.
"For the first three years, we had lots of fun. We had our kids; by year ten,
we weren't having sex a lot, and I was feeling a lot of anger. There just wasn't
a lot of aliveness in our relationship, even though we were committed to it."
"Ian decided we needed to learn the Mars Venus principles. Actually, I was
afraid. I thought we might realize that we'd chosen the wrong mates, that I'd
find I didn't love Ian or that he didn't love me."
"What happened was a total catharsis. We learned the tools that enabled us
to be in this relationship. The main tool for me as a woman was to become more
vulnerable. I saw there that I was on the masculine side of life - always focused
on solving everyone else's problems and ignoring my own needs and feelings.
We learned the way a woman needed to talk, talk, and talk. And how that was
the natural way for a woman."
"Second, and almost more personally profound for me is that I had a huge breakdown
around my feelings of loss for my father. I had never experienced these feelings,
but I began to cry about them. By exploring my feelings, this progressed into
a catharsis about having felt abandoned by men, not being able to trust men,
and feeling that I could not dare to be vulnerable to men. Ian held me when
I expressed my feelings about my father. Allowing Ian to be there to witness
this was just an incredible experience for me!"
"If we women could just trust, and teach men not to try to fix but to listen,
then our hearts would automatically open up and we would feel much closer to
the men. This is what happened to me. That experience improved our whole relationship:
our physical life, our intimacy, our relationship with the children. We stopped
putting the children in the middle in order to keep our distance from each other."
"Without Mars Venus, I don't know where we would be. With it, though, we are
life partners. We have the tools to express our needs, feelings, likes, dislikes,
and the format not to get hooked, not to take things so personally. The format
allows us, out of love, to be able to hear each other and try to support each
other in what we are asking for and feeling."
"How do we make each other happy? Both of us try to keep the romance alive.
We prioritize working on our relationship by taking time to have fun together.
We take time away from the kids to be romantic and we take time away from each
other to do things on our own. When we come back together, we are missing one
another and have more to share."
"As for what I do for Ian to make him happy, well, he needs to be trusted -
so I back off from giving him advice and suggestions unless he really asks.
I try to appreciate him as much as I can for everything he does."
"What does Ian do to make me happy? He listens. He does caring little things
for me. He brings me a cup of tea every morning. He participates greatly in
the parenting. But the biggest thing is his incredible respect for me. He praises
me and expects our children to act the same way. Those are the ways we make
each other happy."
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