For 2015 The 15 Most Helpful Things Ever Said About Women

By Jed Diamond, PhD, LCSW

Over the last 44 years I have been helping men and women achieve more satisfying and joyful relationships. I write about everything from sexual anorexia to sex and love addiction. I’ve accumulated some helpful wisdom along the way. I’ve written about the 15 Most Important Things About Men and Masculinity (https://thirdage.com/blog/2015-15-most-helpful-things-ever-said-about-men-and-masculinity).  Here’s some wisdom about women, sex, and love.

15.  “You never lose by loving. You lose by holding back.”  –Barbara De Angelis

14.  “Woman the bowl, the urn, the cave, the musky jungle. We are the dark mysterium!  We are hidden folds and primal wisdom and always, always, the womb, bearing life, releasing life, and then sucking it back in again, into those moist, chthonic plaits.  ‘Male sexuality, then, returning to this primal source, drinks at the spring of being and enters the murky region, where up is down and death is life, of mythology,’ John Updike has written.”  –Natalie Angier, Woman:  An Intimate Geography.

13.  “If our parents related to us in hostile, critical, cruel, manipulative, overbearing, over dependent, or otherwise inappropriate ways, that is what will feel ‘right’ to us when we meet someone who expresses, perhaps very subtly, undertones of the same attitudes and behaviors.” –Robin Norwood, Women Who Love Too Much

12. “What competing is to males, choosing is to females. We do not mean to imply that women are not competitive with one another; they are, but not so directly or blatantly as men.  Women tend to compete by focusing on themselves, by striving to look more attractive, seductive, desirable, and youthful than the competition.  Of the three evolutionary goods female seek, a future mate’s resources are the most apparent and, to many, the most important.  From insects to primates, females prefer wealthy men.”—Judith Lipton and David Barash, Making Sense of Sex.

11.  “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou

10. “Scientists have documented an astonishing array of structural, chemical, genetic, hormonal, and functional brain differences between women and men. For example, in the brain centers for language and learning women have 11 percent more neurons than men.  The principle hub of both emotion and memory formation—the hippocampus—is also larger in the female brain, as is the brain circuitry for language and observing emotions in others.”  –Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain.

9.  “I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it — I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know — but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.

—Virginia Satir

8.  “If homosexuality is a disease, let’s all call in queer to work: ‘Hello. Can’t work today, still queer.’” –Robin Tyler

7.  “Rx for Women. Regular Sex—at least once a week, and until this is available, remain celibate.  While you’ll probably never get a prescription like this from a doctor, you should know that is actually sound advice.  My research with more than seven hundred women confirms the value of weekly sexual contact, a weekly love cycle.”  –Winnifred B. Cutler.  Love Cycles:  The Science of Intimacy.

6.  “Two oddly correlated phenomena, the international baby boom and the biology of menopause, will accelerate women’s impact on tomorrow. Middle-aged women around the world tend to become much more assertive.  With menopause, levels of the estrogens decline, unmasking natural levels of testosterone and other androgens in the female body.  ‘Such a critical mass of older women with a tradition of rebellion and independence and a way of making a living has not occurred before in history,’ writes historian Gerda Lerner.  We stand on the doorway of what may become an age of women.”  –Helen Fisher, The First Sex:  The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World.

5.  “Women remember stressful events better than men do.  Here’s why.  Estrogen not only activates a larger field of neurons in women during an upsetting experience, meaning that they experience the stress more intensely, but it also prolongs the amount of time that the adrenal gland secretes the stress hormone cortisol—which happens to be a natural memory booster.  That’s why simply remembering an unpleasant incident can bring back the same terrible sadness and agitation that was experienced at the time.”  –Marianne J. Legato., Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget.

4.  “The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy.  The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.”  –Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference:  The Truth About the Male & Female Brain.

3. “Anti-woman feelings appear to be almost universal.  By misogyny, I mean an unreasonable fear or hatred of women.  Men love and hate women simultaneously and in equal measure.  Most men need women desperately and most men reject this driving need as both unworthy and dangerous.  There seems to be something about being a human male that produces a painful conundrum in relating to and living with women.”  –David D. Gilmore.  Misogyny:  The Male Malady

2.  “Over the last four decades, women have experienced unprecedented growth in independence and opportunities. Yet, many of us are flooded with worries, thoughts, and emotions that swirl out of control, sucking our emotions and energy down, down, down.  We are suffering from an epidemic of overthinking—getting caught in torrents of negative thoughts and emotions that overwhelm us and interfere with our functioning and well-being.”—Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Women Who Think Too Much:  How to Break Free of Over-Thinking and Reclaim Your Life.

1.  “’No’ is a complete sentence.” –Anne Lamont

Well, let’s be honest.  These are the not the most helpful things ever said about women.  They are just one man’s collection of what he thinks are important words of wisdom.  I hope you found them valuable.

Jed Diamond, PhD, LCSW, is the Founder and Director of the MenAlive, a health program that helps men live well throughout their lives. Though focused on men’s health, MenAlive is also for women who care about the health of the men in their lives. Diamond’s new book, Stress Relief for Men: How to Use the Revolutionary Tools of Energy Healing to Live Well, brings together the wisdom accumulated in 40 years helping more than 20,000 men, women, and children.