th his wife and family. 

REDIRECTING ENERGY AND ATTENTION 

1 remember when 1 first learned to redirect my energies into the little things. When Bonnie and 
1 were first married, 1 was almost a workaholic. In addition to writing books and teaching 


seminars, 1 had a counceling practice for fifty hours a week. In the first year of our marriage, 
she let me know again and again how much she needed more time with me. Repeatedly she 
would share her feelings of abandonment and hurt. 

Sometimes she would share her feelings in a letter. We call this a Love Letter. It always ends 
with love and includes feelings of anger, sadness, fear, and sorrow. In chapter 11 we will 
explore more deeply the methods and importance of writing these Love Letters. She wrote this 
Love Letter about my spending too much time at work. 

Dear John, 

I'm writing you this letter to share with you my feelings. 1 don't mean to tell you what to do. 1 
just want you to understand my feelings. 

1 am angry that you spend so much time at work. 1 

am angry y that you come home with nothing left for 
me. I want to spend more time with you. 

It hurts to feel like you care more about your clients than me. 1 feel sad that you are so tired. I 
miss you. 

I'm afraid you don't want to spend time with me. 1 
am afraid of being another burden in your life. 1 am afraid of sounding like a nag. 1 am afraid 
my feelings are not important to you. 

I'm sorry if this is hard to hear. I know you are doing your best. 1 appreciate how hard you 
work. 

I love you, Bonnie 

After reading about her feeling neglected I realized that 1 truly was giving more to my clients 
than 1 was to her. 1 would give my undivided attention to my clients and then come home 
exhausted and ignore my wife. 

When a Man Overworks 

1 was ignoring her not because I didn't love her or care for her but because 1 had nothing left to 
give. 1 naively thought I was doing the best thing by working hard to provide a better life 
(more money) for her and our family. Once 1 understood how she felt, 1 developed a plan for 
solving this problem in our relationship. 

Instead of seeing eight clients a day 1 started seeing seven. 1 pretended that my wife was my 
eighth client. Every night 1 came home a hour earlier. 1 pretended in my mind that my wife was 
my most important client. 1 started giving her that devoted and undivided attentio n 1 would 


give a client. When I arrived home 1 started doing little things for her. The success of this plan 
was immediate. Not only was she happier but 1 was too. 

Gradually, as 1 felt being loved for the ways I could support her and our family, I became less 
driven to be a great success. 1 started to slow down, and to my surprise not only our 
relationship but also my work flourished, becoming more successful without my having to 
work as hard. 

1 found that when 1 was succeeding at home, my work reflected that success. 1 realized that 
success in the work world was not achieved through hard work alone. It was also dependent on 
my 

ability to inspire trust in others. When 1 felt loved by my family, not only did I feel more 
confident, but others also trusted and appreciated me more. 

Now a Women Con Help 

Bonnie's support played a big part in this change. In addition to sharing her honest and loving 
feelings, she was also very persistent in asking me to do things for her and then giving me a lot 
of appreciation when 1 did them. Gradually, 1 started to realize how wonderful it is to be loved 
for doing little things. 1 was relieved from feeling that 1 had to do great things to be loved. It 
was a revelation. 

WHEN WOMEN GIVE POINTS 

Woman possess the special ability to appreciate the little things of fife as much as the big 
things. This is a blessing for men. Most men strive for greater and greater success because they 
believe it will make them worthy of love. Deep inside, they crave love and admiration from 
others. They do not know that they can draw that love and admiration to them without having 
to be a greater success. 

A woman has the ability to heal a man of this addiction to success by appreciating the little 
things he does. But she may not express apprec iation if she doesn't understand how important 
it is to a man. She may let her resentment get in the way. 

HEALING THE RESENTMENT FLU 

Women instinctively appreciate the little things. The only exceptions are when a woman 
doesn't realize a man needs to hear her appreciation or when she feels the score is uneven. 
When a woman feels 
unloved and neglected it is hard for her automatically to appreciate what a man does do for her. 
She feels resentful because she has given so much more than he has. This resentmen t blocks 
her ability to appreciate the little things. 


Resentment, like getting the flu or a cold, is not healthy. When a woman is sick with 


resentment she tends to negate what a man has done for her because, according to the way a 
woman keeps score, she h as done so much more. 

When the score is forty to ten in favor of the woman, she may begin to feel very resentful. 
Something happens to a woman when she feels she is giving more than she is getting. Quite 
unconsciously she subtracts his score of ten from her score of forty and concludes the score in 
their relationship is thirty to zero. This makes sense mathematically and is understandable, but 
it doesn't work. 

When she subtracts his score from her score he ends up with a zero, and he is not a zero. He has 
not given zero; he has given ten. When he comes home she has a coldness in her eyes or in her 
voice that says he is a zero. She is negating what he has done. She reacts to him as if he has 
given nothing-but he has given ten. 

The reason a woman tends to reduce a man's points this way is 

use she feels unloved. The unequal score makes her feel that she because she fee Feeling 
unloved, she finds it very difficult to appreciate even the ten points he can legitimately claim. 
Of course, this isn't fair, but it is how it works. 

What generally happens in a relationship at this point is the man feels unappreciated and loses 
his motivation to do more. He catches the resentment flu. She then continues to feel more 
resentful, and the situation gets worse and worse. Her resentment flu gets worse. 

What She Con Do 

The way of solving this problem is to understand it compassionately from both sides. He needs 
to be appreciated, while she needs to feel supported. Otherwise their sickness gets worse. 

The solution to this resentment is for her to take responsibility. 

She needs to take responsibility for having contributed to her problem by giving more and 
letting the score get so uneven. She needs to treat herself as if she has the flu or a cold and take 
a rest from giving so much in the relationship. She needs to pamper herself and allow her 
partner to take care of her more. 

When a woman feels resentful, she usually will not give her partner a chance to be supportive, 
or, if he tries, she will negate the value of what he has done and give him another zero. She 
closes the door to his support. By taking responsibility for giving too much, she can give up 
blaming him for the problem and start a new scorecard. She can give him another chance and, 
with her new understanding, improve the situation. 

What He Con Do 

When a man feels unappreciated, he stops giving support. A way he can responsibly deal with 


the situation is to understand that it Is hard for her to give points for his support and appreciate 
him when she is sick with resentment. 

He can release his own resentment by understanding that she needs to receive for a while 
before she can give again. He can remember this as h e attentively gives his love and affection 
in little ways. For a while he should not expect her to be as appreciative as he deserves and 
needs. It helps if he takes responsibility for giving her the flu because he neglected to do the 
little things that she needs. 

With this foresight he can give without expecting much in return until she recovers from her 
flu. Knowing that he can solve this problem will help him release his resentment as well. If he 
continues giving and she focuses on taking a rest from giving and focuses on receiving his 
support with love, the balance can be quickly restored. 

WHY MEN GIVE LESS 

A man rarely intends to take more and give less. Yet men are notorious for giving less in 
relationships. Probably you have exper 
ienced this in your relationships. Women commonly complain that their male partner starts out 
more loving and then gradually becomes passive. Men also feel unfairly treated. in the 
beginning women are so appreciative and loving, and then they become resentful and 
demanding. This mystery can be understood when we realize how men and women keep score 
differently. 

There are five major reasons a man stops giving. They are: 

1. Martians Idealize Fairness. A man focuses all his energies into a project at work and thinks 
he has ju st scored fifty points. Then he comes home and sits back, waiting for his wife to score 
her fifty points. He does not know that in her experience he has only scored one point. He stops 
giving because he thinks he has already given more. 
In his mind this is the fair and loving thing to do. He allows her to give fifty points worth of 
support to even the score. He doesn't realize that his hard work at the office scores only one 
point. His m h( 

model of fairness can work only when he understands and respects women give one point for 
each gift of love. This first insight has practical applications for both men and women. They 
are: 

For Men: Remember that for a woman, big things and little things score one point. All gifts of 
love are equal and