Episode 16 - Alison Armstrong: Creating Peace in the War Between The Sexes (part 1)

Alison Armstrong: Creating Peace in the War Between The Sexes (part 1)

Announcer:  This program is intended for mature audiences only.

[Music]

Chip August: Welcome to Sex, Love and Intimacy. I’m your host, Chip August and on today’s show, we have a wonderful guest, Alison Armstrong. Alison is the founder and guiding light of PAX program, that’s PAX program Incorporated. She’s the creator of ‘Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women’…, a workshop; actually, it’s a whole series of workshops. She’s the author of ‘Keys to the Kingdom’. And Alison has done lots of research and knows lots and lots and lots about men, and women and how to make peace between them. Today, I hope we’re going be to talking about her amazing journey into the study of men, like how she got there, what’s she’s learned…. I hope we’re going to get some tips and advice on Communication, and on Intimacy; maybe a lot more understanding about the conflict and starting to end some of the confusion that happens between men and women.

Alison Armstrong: You have to imagine red hair, bright pink lipstick, Texas accent saying, “Why is it that men are so wonderful in the beginning, and they’ll take you to great places and bring you gifts, and be very romantic, and listen to you talk about your pets and your family. And then after a few weeks or few months, they turn into a sports-watching, pizza-eating, beer-belching couch slug.
He said, “You’re a frog farmer.”
She said, “What?”
And he said, “Some women turn frogs into princes. You, my dear, turn princes into frogs.”

Chip August: Wow!

Alison Armstrong: Whenever they did something that surprised me, I would try to figure out why they did it. And then when I thought I knew why they did it, I’d ask them. And…, (LAUGHS), it was shocking, because in the beginning, I was always wrong.

Chip August: (LAUGHS)

Alison Armstrong: And, that was a real eye-opener for me, because the motivation that I had, really projected onto these 3 men, were the typical motivations of women.
I realized that as a woman, I would never experience being powerful, until I was strong enough to allow men to be powerful. And it’s just this moment of clarity; it goes together. We’re going to be powerful together, or we’re going to be basket-cases together. And there’s no other possible combination.
Men have a…, oh my gosh…, infinitely stronger sense of your self than a woman does. Women survive by adapting.

Chip August: Welcome, Alison Armstrong!

Alison Armstrong: Thanks, Chip.

Chip August: I’m really glad that you can be here, and I have so many questions for you

Alison Armstrong: (LAUGHS) Fire away!

Chip August: I was looking at your biography, and I noticed that actually that you were pretty big as a Homeless Advocate in your home county and you did a lot of work with homeless children and homeless men. And…, can you tell me how a Homeless Advocate winds up teaching women about men?

Alison Armstrong: (LAUGHS) I’ll try to give you the short version. But it probably starts with my inheriting my father’s brain. My dad’s an engineer, and I was trying to figure out how things work, and how to make it better. And my mind works the same way. It’s just been implied to the human condition, you know, instead of airplanes and automobiles. And when I was the Chairperson of the Orange County Homeless Issues Taskforce, my approach to that was really in trying to determine the root causes of homelessness, and get to the bottom of it, and the bottom of it, and the bottom of it. And that’s my obsession, you know…, it’s finding…, finding the place where the simplest action could completely change the course of events. And that was…, in my work with the homeless…, you know, it brought me back to the children. So much the homelessness…, the cause and why it happened or shouldn’t have happened in a child’s life. And I just, you know, I’m merrily pursuing that in my professional life, you know…. And then meanwhile, my own marriage to my first husband was completely dissatisfying. I…, we were barely friends…, you know…, just room mates…, spent very little time together. My hopes and dreams for what a marriage could be or should be were not even coming close and it got to the point where I realized it was never going to happen. And I asked David for a divorce and I started a relationship with a man who did all the things that I’d hoped would happen. He was very interested and romantic and he was fascinated with my work and it was great, you know. I thought this was really cool! You know, I married the wrong guy and then a few months later, he…, I had half the same complaints about him that I had about my husband. He literally…, he’d changed. He’d completely changed. And I was baffled by that and trying to grasp…, “Why, why? When did this happen? And how did this happen?” And I concluded that he had changed when he had caught me…, when the pursuit was over.
It’s a big myth among women really, that men need the chase and need the pursuit. And while that’s true, the myth is our interpretation of what that means. But I decided, you know…, he changed when he caught me and my new approach to relationships would be never to be caught. (LAUGHS)

Chip August: (LAUGHS)

Alison Armstrong: Even though, you know, I wanted to be caught. Be caught, and be married and have more children and live happily ever after and this is my new strategy for dealing with the opposite sex. And then I went to a seminar…, I attended a seminar. And my friend asked the man who was teaching the seminar…, he was talking about love and communication. And I can’t do a Texas accent, but you have to imagine red hair, bright pink lipstick, Texas accent saying, “Why is it that men are so wonderful in the beginning, and they’ll take you to great places and bring you gifts, and be very romantic, and listen to you talk about your pets and your family. And then after a few weeks or few months, they turn into a sports-watching, pizza-eating, beer-belching couch slug. (LAUGHS)

Chip August: (LAUGHS) Good question!

Alison Armstrong: And she was very nasty in the way that she said it. And I was watching, his name was Herb, and I was watching the man and expected him to get defensive. Like you, grew up in an alcoholic household. So, I these keen observations, righ?

Chip August: …yeah…

Alison Armstrong:… We’re very tuned in see…, read body language and move people from moment to moment, and I was keenly observing him and was surprised when he liked the question. You know, he had a positive response to the question and he strolled up to her, and he looks her up and down and…it was so funny…, and he said, “You’re a frog farmer.”
She said, “What?”
And he said, “Some women turn frogs into princes. You, my dear, turn princes into frogs.”

Chip August: Wow!

Alison Armstrong: And…, oh my gosh…, it struck me to the heart. And I had this vision of a huge farmhouse, with rows and rows of frogs with little human heads (LAUGHS). There was my boyfriend, that I just broken up with, and there was my husband, and all the men before them; who had started out being wonderful and I was just skewered. I just…, I don’t really remember anything that happened the rest of the night. I just sat there thinking…, “I’m a frog farmer! Oh, my God! I’m a frog farmer! I’m a really successful frog farmer!” You know…, I was very effective. I realized that I could bring the worst out in a man…, usually in about 10 days. And I was proud of myself. I thought I was revealing the Khan, you know. And it occurred to me in that moment, that maybe it was more like, kicking a dog and being surprised when it ran away or bit your foot. And so I committed myself that evening that I was going to find out how he did it. Because even though he was very successful, it was not clear in cause and effect. And I decided to study men and find out what was I doing…, and what do women do that brings out the worst in men?

Chip August: It’s a great question! It’s a terrific question! Now, I just…, before we run too fast past this…, I heard you say, “I thought I was trying to protect myself from the Khan.

Alison Armstrong: Yes.

Chip August: I want to come back to that protection a little bit here. So, I think what I’m hearing you say is that, in the name of trying not to get hurt, what you wound up doing was pushing away, emasculating the men that you were with. Is that kind of what it was?

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. I, over the years, had developed a really negative weave of men…, very negative weave of men; very typical weave of men. And I was suspicious of interest, and chivalry, and passion, and romance, and had concluded that was all just an act. And that if I poked hard enough, I could find out what was behind the act. And not realizing that it was the actual poking…,

Chip August: Right.

Alison Armstrong:…, that brought about the end of that behavior.

Chip August: Right. Right. That it wasn’t an act. But that when you received it as an act, basically…, who wanted to keep doing it then?

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. And another way to put it is…, men would go from initiating their relationship with me and being generative, and causing, you know, moments of intimacy and romance and interest and being together…. So, they’re being very proactive in their relationship with me and then because of the way that I acted, they became defensive.

Chip August: Yeah.

Alison Armstrong: And I though their defensiveness was a weakness on their part; instead of a totally appropriate response to my attacks.

Chip August: Right. Right. So, now, you decided to do some research.

Alison Armstrong: I did. I decided to study men.

Chip August: How did you do it?

Alison Armstrong: Well…, because I ran a non-profit organization, I had business consulting clients on the side to step-up my income. And I was the consultant to 3 business consultants. And I was their cheerleader, their black board, you know, their sounding board, their coach, their advisor…, their confidant, their friend and…, I just started with them. And whenever they did something that surprised me, I would try to figure out why they did it. And then when I thought I knew why they did it, I’d ask them. And…, (LAUGHS), it was shocking, because in the beginning, I was always wrong.

Chip August: (LAUGHS)

Alison Armstrong: And, that was a real eye-opener for me, because the motivation that I had, really projected onto these 3 men, were the typical motivations of women. And when they were appalled that I would think they would ever do anything for that reason, I started to realize that these people were much more different than I thought. And that’s when I realized that I…, that I related to men as hairy women.

Chip August: Right…

Alison Armstrong: As…, you know…, sort of rude women, uncouth women, insensitive women. But basically, women. I thought that at the core, we were the same. And men were just misbehaving, you know. (LAUGHS)

Chip August: Right, right.

Alison Armstrong: That they knew what they should be doing, and were just doing something else instead. And as I talked to Steven and Brooke and Carl, I found out…, because their answers were exactly the same. They were very much aligned with each other. That’s when I realized that I was completely off base; and needed to develop a real ability to listen, and to have compassion and discover who these people were.

Chip August: Wow! That’s a pretty big move from being a frog farmer, to actually being intrigued and wanting to know what’s happening for those men.

Alison Armstrong: Yes! It was a huge shift for me! And as you can imagine, as a man, being interactive with a woman who is intrigued and not presuming, especially not presuming guilt, and who really wanted to understand you and…, “Wow! Why do you do what you do?”…, from “What did you do that for?”. (LAUGHS) Men immediately began responding to me very differently.

Chip August: I’ll bet! Yes. (LAUGHS) That would make you very popular!

Alison Armstrong: It was great. It was really great. And fortunately, I didn’t know that I had…, Oh, gosh! This is sad to talk about…, but…, it did make me very popular. But, I didn’t know who was listening, was the point of view of ‘know thy enemy’. And the first six months of my research, everything that I learned about men, unconsciously I used against them.

Chip August: Right. You were arming yourself with information.

Alison Armstrong: I really was. It was the best defense I could offend.

Chip August: Yeah.

Alison Armstrong: And…, and I would learn these extraordinary things about you and then turn around, and use it to manipulate you more effectively. And what most women don’t know is that, manipulation always backfires.

Chip August: Yeah. It always works in the short-term, and it always fails in the long-term.

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. It…, and…, and you’re worse-off. Definitely worse-off. And that was what was happening in my relationships, until a very good friend of mine, and I bless her for it…, her name was Ellen Hearse; she caught me on it. And she said, “Alison, men are attracted to you like bees to honey. And when you’re done with them, it’s as if they’d been with a vampire.”

Chip August: Wow!

Alison Armstrong: And she proceeded to lay out for me, every way that she had directly witnessed me, emasculating men or knew that I had, because she saw the results.

Chip August: Wow!

Alison Armstrong: And as she laid it out for me, I…, Oh my Gosh! This is so awful; and she’s telling me, “And so, this way, and that way, and you did this, and you did that, and you said this, and you said that, and…”
And I was like, “Uh-huh. Yeah.” And, “Oh, Yeah!”, and “Uh-huh, uh-huh!”, and like…, “What’s the problem?”

Chip August: Right.

Alison Armstrong: You know…, everything I did was what women do. Everything I did was what my mother, my step-sisters, my friends, what you see on TV was totally normal…, everything she was describing. So, I couldn’t just understand why there was a problem with it. And then, she got right to me. She said, “You’re even doing it to Jeffery.”

Chip August: …ooooh

Alison Armstrong: … who is my son. And who at the time, was three years old. Yeah, yeah. Right to the mother’s heart. And I could see that I, from the moment Jeff was born, I was trying to squish and carve the man out of him.

Chip August: Right!

Alison Armstrong: You know. It was so unappealing to me. I was going to…, I was going to raise my son to be a woman.

Chip August: Right!

Alison Armstrong: And I thought…, honestly I thought that I was going to be doing him a favor.

Chip August: Right! You were going to correct him of all these terrible habits and … yeah…, I got it.

Alison Armstrong: … all these tendencies, and all these unevolved, uncouth ways of being. And in that moment, I saw that I was really just killing him off. And he’s such a magnificent person. And when she asked me to give it up, which was terrifying to me…, the idea of you know…, to give up emasculating me…, are you kidding? That’s how I protect myself, you know. I said, “But, they’ll hurt me!” But I realized that every time I emasculated a man, it was from fear. And it reinforced my own sense of weakness and reinforced that I really didn’t know how to deal with men. So, I played dirty! And…, and I realized that…, I realized that as a woman, I would never experience being powerful, until I was strong enough to allow men to be powerful. And it’s just this moment of clarity; it just goes together. We’re going to be powerful together, or we’re going to be basket-cases together. And there’s no other possible combination.

Chip August: As human beings, we often confuse force with power. We don’t get, “I can be forceful and still powerless.” That really powerful…, what makes us feel powerful is when we really are adept at empowering ourselves and others.

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more.

Chip August: Yeah. Listen. We need to stop for just a moment, and take a break here…, give a little support for our sponsors. This is Chip August. I’m talking to Alison Armstrong. We’re having a great conversation. Please come on right back, but please listen in and hear what our sponsors have to say. We’ll be back in just a moment.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Chip August: We’re back. I’m Chip August. You’re listening to Sex, Love and Intimacy. And my guest, Alison Armstrong, who is the creator of the ‘Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women’ workshop. We’re talking about men and women…, we’re really talking about Alison’s journey.
When we took a break, you were talking about you epiphany…, your ah-hah moment... here. And I love your story. You’re story’s’ really great. And you had me wondering, do you think the sexs are at war. I mean, the way you describe it, it’s sounds like…, you know…, there you are in the trenches, fighting the battle.

Alison Armstrong: Well, I think that one sex is at war, and it’s mine.

Chip August: Wow!

Alison Armstrong: What I have said many, many times and women laugh and nod…, is that the context that women have inherited for our relationships with men is an adversarial context and it goes very much like, “Find the best enemy you can, and marry him!”

Chip August: (LAUGHS) Yeah! Yeah! I’ve had that feeling!

Alison Armstrong: Yes! Yes, I’m sure! And we don’t even…, it’s not conscious. Even though we talk about men, in such a despairing way, it never really bubbles to the surface…, “Gosh! Something’s really off here!” It’s just status quo, and that moment that I gave up emasculating men forever, I unwittingly shifted myself into a new paradigm. And it’s a paradigm of partnership. And my study of men continued from that moment, in that new paradigm. And for a long time, it looked like a man would do something that was offensive to men, or hurtful to me; you know, something a woman would never do if she cared about you. And it was…, and I would seek him as he did it…, as he arrived late or said the wrong thing, or wore the wrong clothes; I’d see him hand me the knife, or hand me the gun, or put the grenade in my hand. (LAUGHS) He just…, he would.., he would give me the weapon, and I would look at it. And normally, I would have used it. But instead I just set it down beside me, and have a different kind of conversation. And…, oh my gosh…, it changed everything. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that, oh my gosh, that it was maybe 3 weeks later that I met my husband. You know, we’ve been together for 16 years now. And it happened right away. And I don’t think he would have noticed me before. Or might have seen me, you know…, but would have gone…, uff! Pretty, but edgy! You know, that way that men do…, ugh…”Too sharp! Too crunchy! Too hard!” And instead there was this new openness, and softness and radiance that…, (LAUGHS), you know, it was love at first sight for him.

Chip August: Well now…, let’s talk about men for a minute here.

Alison Armstrong: Okay.

Chip August: If I get Freud right…, and I usually do get Freud right…, he thought it was as simple as, every man wanted to marry his mother and every woman wanted to marry her father. You know…, and that was a fundamental psychological conflict, right..., the edible conflict. You want to marry your mother, but we’re disgusted at ourselves for wanting to marry our mothers. Do men really want to marry their mothers?

Alison Armstrong: Oh Gosh! Men want to marry a woman who expresses qualities that hopefully, he got from his mother; qualities of unconditional love, acceptance, faith in him, encouragement, giving him the benefit of the doubt, expressing love in those small acts of caring and support…, like you know…, new underwear in the top drawer. I mean, that is definitely something that I’ve heard men expresses over and over again. That they…, that they need in a wife. Being cared for and taken care of and believed in, in that way is such an advantage to them in life. But, they don’t want to be “mothered”, which is that mistake women make all the time. And the difference between those beautiful, nurturing mother qualities and the “mothereeing” that women do, is that attitude that makes him a man that he’s being treated like a 5-year old.

Chip August: Yeah.

Alison Armstrong: And where the woman is controlling and directing, instead of offering and inviting. And so, you know, one is irresistible, and the other, he’ll head for the hill, which is awful. But I’ll say, added to that…, he doesn’t just want to marry the nurturer. He call them…,I call them…, I call them the temptress and queen. He wants…, you know…, men are so recharged and filled up by the physical vitality of women, and completely expanded and nurtured by our sensual and sexual energy. And you need that…, you need that as well. And then the queen, which is our vision, our spirit, our ethics, our morality, our big-picture view of wanting the world to be a better place, our generosity…, those qualities are what we call the queen; those qualities make a man, want to be a better man. They bring out the best in you, and inspire you and have you admire a woman. And so those 3 things is what…, become the ‘temptress’, the ‘mother’ and the ‘queen’…, that’s femininity. And…,

Chip August: So, you’re trying to make, like a balance, of those…, you’re trying to help women find all of it, right?

Alison Armstrong: Well, it’s not. We actually don’t have to find it, because it’s in us. All the qualities I mentioned are our birth-right, but what happens is that we don’t know how valuable they are. So, we instead put our energy into expressing our masculine characters. And one thing to know about women, which is really different from men and surprising to men is that…, men have a , oh my gosh…, infinitely stronger sense of their self than a woman does. Women survive by adapting. We’re…, that came from within and has her eye on how to adapt, every moment to survive and to succeed. And so we, without even trying to, will become whatever a relationship, or family, or organization, you know…, a job, or even society values the most. We’ll become it.

Chip August: Yeah.

Alison Armstrong: And our society is sort of peculiar, because we sort of, bash men and we blame men for everything that is wrong. But we worship masculine qualities and characteristics of productivity, and being logical and generative, those great qualities. They’re just not the only qualities that the world needs.

Chip August: Yeah.

Alison Armstrong: But women have…, I think the feminist movement…, although we owe it a lot for what’s possible between men and women now, as equals…, it was a misnomer. Women became less feminine, a result of the feminist movement. It should have been called the ‘womanist’ movement. And because it has resulted in the masculinization of women, and, you know, it has a lot to do with our difficulties in getting married, and being married and staying married; because women try to project themselves as, “look how productive I am, and I’m so little trouble.” (LAUGHS)…, thinking that makes her attractive to a man, when it does not make her attractive at all to men. I mean like, “Good. I should hire you, to work for me.” But, that’s not what he wants in a partner. The way one man put it was, “What I love about a woman is everything about you that’s not me. I’m not looking for someone like me to partner with. I’m looking for what I’m missing, what I don’t have and even on my best day…, I am not feminine.”

Chip August: It’s exactly right. We’re not looking for a mirror. we’re looking for a complement. We need to take a break again. I’m talking to Alison Armstrong. We’re talking about men and women, and talking about, sort of, about that war between the sexes, and how to promote some peace. Please stay with us through the sponsors, and come on back. We’re going to have one more segment here. And I’m also going to ask Alison to perhaps give us some exercise, that we can perhaps, do at home to make us better listeners. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Chip August: We’re back. I’m your host, Chip August. We’re listening to Sex, Love and Intimacy. We’re talking to Alison Armstrong, and she’s just given me a wealth of stuff about women, and how women see men and how relationships work and…, Alison, it’s just been great fun talking to you. And I just want to know, almost at a prime, I kind of want to leave you with a final question and I kind of want to request that perhaps you have an exercise that women can do, that will help them to not be ‘frog farmers’, and actually access that temptress and that queen and that mother…, and so…the question first. Okay, the way psychologists usually ask this is, “What do men really want and what do women really want?”
So, what do women really want?

Alison Armstrong: Oh, my gosh! What do women really want in life or what do women really want from men?

Chip August: In relationships.

Alison Armstrong: I think they want to feel safe; which for us has a lot to do with the tone of your voice, and the volume of your voice. And we want to feel that we’re enough. You know, that all our body parts are the right size and shape. That we’re pretty enough, or good enough, or interesting enough. We want to be listened to in a way that’s not natural for men, and don’t know we need to set men up to do it. I think…, I think most women want to make their men laugh. You know, we’re really happy when you think we’re funny. That is cool! And there was a joke circulating around the Internet that was really good; a story about thea woman, being a witch or a princess. And I thought it was really good, because the end of it was what a woman really wants is a choice. The woman really wants a say in life. And what I really love about my research about men is that by understanding men, I have more of a say in the control and quality of my relationships, than I ever had before by wielding my sword.

Chip August: Yeah. Have we…, yeah, have we…, I always ask my guests if you have an exercise that some of my listeners can do at home. I’d just like to leave them with an exercise, or a technique or a thing that they can do that can improve their love, their intimacy, their sexuality in their life..., I’m wondering. So, do you have any, perhaps, for some of the women that are listening?

Alison Armstrong: Well, I have so many that I’ll have to pick. You mentioned before that, an exercise for the women to nurture their own femininity?

Chip August: That would be great!

Alison Armstrong: Well…, (LAUGHS), this may not sound like an exercise but…, Sleep. Women need to sleep. We can’t be feminine on fumes. Women can be masculine on chocolate and caffeine. But she can’t be feminine without real honest-to-goodness energy, which comes from sleep and movement. These are the best ways to nurture your own femininity. Something that they could do with their partner; we spoke earlier about you men…, you know…, what is it about a man and their mom that they wish the woman in his life would be? I would recommend that they ask the men in their life, what are the things that they do that have him feel the most supported and the most appreciated. And…, but this is really important…, after she asks the question, she needs to put imaginary duct-tape over her mouth.

Chip August: (LAUGHS) Yeah.

Alison Armstrong: Because, men and women think so differently. When a man doesn’t answer the question immediately, a women will usually think that he didn’t get the question and she’ll rephrase it. And then when he doesn’t answer that immediately, she’ll think he doesn’t really know the answer, and so she’ll give him multiple choice; not realizing that in all those cases, she’s actually interrupted his thinking process, whereby he’s really honoring the question and answering it sincerely, and that takes more time, ‘cause he’s going to pull it from a deeper place in himself.

Chip August: Absolutely. The most precious gift you give is silence.

Alison Armstrong: Yeah. We call it, ‘Listen 30 seconds longer’. So, ask the question. Don’t rephrase it, don’t interrupt, don’t suggest anything. Just put imaginary duct-tape over your mouth and listen and learn.

Chip August: Well…, you’ve been so great to talk to. And I’m so sorry about the time…, and in fact, I’m sorry we’re out of time. But, I’d like to do another show with you and are you happy to come back and talk to me some more?

Alison Armstrong: I’d love to do that.

Chip August: That would be great! Those of you who are listening, if you’d like to send an email to me, you could email me at Chip@ personallifemedia.com. That’s ‘Personallifemedia’, all written as one word. If you want to leave a voice mail for me, you can actually call 2063505333. If you leave your name, my show name, like Sex, Love and Intimacy, and your comments and your questions, your phone number and/or an email. And when you leave that message, that message will get forwarded to me relatively quickly. Leaving a message, does indicate an agreement to use your message on air. So, hopefully be aware, that if you’re leaving a message, we may use it on air. So, we’re going to be…, next week’s show, we’re going to be listening to Alison. ‘Cause as long as we have her here, let’s talk some more. This kind of brings us to this end of show. For personal transcripts of this show, and other shows on PersonalLifeMedia, please visit PersonalLifeMedia.com, ‘Personalifemedia’ all as one word.
I’m Chip August. Thanks so much for listening, and I hope you’ll tune in again.

[Music]

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