Warren Farrell - Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (1998)

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Killing the criticizer, then, is part of our evolutionary past; listening in response to criticism is part of our evolutionary future.

Warren Farrell
After a conflict, women are not only more likely to turn to other womenfriends for support, but are nine times more likely to be with their children should conflict become divorce.

Warren Farrell
We are the offspring of approval-seekers. We want approval so badly that we vacillate between conforming to get it and standing out (being outstanding) to get it.

Warren Farrell
It never occurs to most of us at a moment of disagreement with our partner to take the time to appreciate our partner's positive character strengths as reflected in a stance we disagree with. When we do that, it allows our partner to know that no matter which decision she or he makes, our trust in their underlying character is never in question. It turns every disagreement into a potential gift of love.

Warren Farrell
In the future, women will increasingly want nurturer-connectors, since part of what he will be nurturing is her ability to protect herself.

Warren Farrell
Sharing instructions about how to perform better for others is very different than sharing feelings about life experiences that make us happy or sad.

Warren Farrell
All of this is men's genetic heritage. However, men's genetic heritage is in conflict with their genetic future.

Warren Farrell
What's true is that everyone is uncomfortable with expressing anger and being critical. Anger and criticism generates rejection. And everyone hates rejection.

Warren Farrell
Men's pay paid women to love and nurture, to connect and feel. To be nurturer-connectors. In contrast, men received their pay by being some form of killer-protector. By becoming a human doing (a captain or a coal miner), not a human being (a person who feels happy or sad).

Warren Farrell
A man becomes successful by repressing his feelings, not expressing his feelings.

Warren Farrell
When a woman appears to express fear, we cannot assure her without at least releasing her from responsibility; when we interpret the same emotion in a man as anger, we want to blame him and be certain he acknowledges responsibility. We want to find her guiltless; we want to find him guilty.

Warren Farrell
Any guy who's played team sports has practiced a skill I call team sport empathy : he's practiced focusing on anticipating the other team's moves. That means figuring out their way of looking at the situation.

Warren Farrell
A man fears that conflict with his wife will lead to less intimacy, not more intimacy.

Warren Farrell
Becoming a human doing was exactly what society needed. But for an individual man, becoming a human doing was his undoing.

Warren Farrell
Our choice of partners is perhaps the clearest single statement of our choice of values. Therefore, when we blame our partner for anything, we should really be confronting ourselves. Not as in Yes, I made a bad choice, but as in How does this choice reflect my values?

Warren Farrell
If our binoculars search for our partner's best intent, it will usually be found.

Warren Farrell
In brief, when women batter, men's first priority is to support the women and help them change; when men batter, women's first priority is to escape the men and put them in prison.

Warren Farrell
During the past thirty years, the women's movement has supported women to express virtually every feeling women felt. To other women. To Men. To society. Women's feelings became course curriculum, women's studies, TV specials, talk shows, and Lifetime cable. Women's feelings were called both education and entertainment. Men's were repressed until they were called ulcers.

Warren Farrell
When we give trust, we receive trust. And people who trust us pay attention to us.

Warren Farrell
Listening in response to criticism mandates a shift in our internal psyche that marks perhaps the most important single evolutionary shift humans can make.

Warren Farrell
The emphasis of the men's group was on understanding, coping, changing the situation and then, if all else failed, getting out; the emphasis of battered women's groups is on getting out first, and second, locking up the problem (the man).

Warren Farrell
We often think that when a man insults another man by calling him a girl, the insult reflects a contempt for women. No. It reflects a contempt for any man who is unwilling to make himself strong enough to protect someone as precious as a woman.

Warren Farrell
The more a man is trained to be a man, the more he is trained to protect women and children, not hurt women and children. He is trained to volunteer to die before even a stranger is hurt – especially a woman or child.

Warren Farrell
Humans have spent (10k+) years learning to fight and debate with the other side, and almost no time learning to listen and empathize.

Warren Farrell
The function of gossip is to create an in group bond by creating an out group enemy.

Warren Farrell
Sitcoms routinely portray women hitting men, almost never portray men hitting women. When he fails to leave, it is not called Battered Man Syndrome ; it is called comedy.

Warren Farrell
The first instinctive response to any criticism is a defensive response. (The quicker the response, the more defensive.)

Warren Farrell
In order to connect and nurture, it is not just helpful to be in touch with feelings, it is necessary. So men's first job – their next evolutionary strategy – involves being in touch with their feelings.

Warren Farrell
The motto of feminists: There is never an excuse for hitting a woman. Shouldn't it be, There is never an excuse for hitting. ?

Warren Farrell
What Men Would Say When Male-Bashing Is Called Funny, But Female-Bashing Is Called Sexist

Warren Farrell