Something I often see in coaching is a guy’s total bewilderment at his wife’s attraction … or lack of attraction.
See if this describes you …
Your wife runs hot and cold for seemingly no reason. You are mystified and frustrated at the random game of attraction that goes on in your house all the time. The same behaviors that elicit a response one day, get a cold shoulder the next. And you have no earthly idea of what drives all this. Sound familiar?
One analogy that has proven helpful in coaching is the concept of the Attraction Bucket.
Each woman has an Attraction Bucket that needs to get to a certain level before she’s attracted. Every leadership behavior you add fills the bucket a little more. Add enough leadership so that the bucket reaches a certain line, and bingo, suddenly, seemingly magically, your wife is into you again. Hot, wild sex with no apparent effort. Yowsa! You’ve finally figured her out.
Of course, we all know what happens in real life. A few days later, it’s back to the baseline, and you’re left wondering where that wild, wanton woman went.
So, what happened?
Evaporation.
The attraction in the bucket evaporates over time just like water. It’s cumulative to a certain extent, but you need to keep adding to the bucket on an on-going basis.
How do you add to the bucket?
The majority of women are attracted to the same basic qualities in a man …. confidence, decisiveness, strength. A man who’s not swayed by her moods and her emotions. A man who doesn’t orbit her like a needy child. A man who has his own passions and interests. A man who doesn’t endlessly whine and complain. A man with positive flowing energy.
So, there are basic things you’re going to need to do. You need to get to the gym and get in shape. You need to get your finances in order. You need to have interests outside your wife. You need to be confident about decisions you make for yourself and your family. These are the foundation for filling her bucket.
But what if you’ve already got your structural stuff taken care of and you’re still not seeing the attraction you want?
Quite often, what I see in coaching is that more than anything else, it’s the little daily interactions that are killing attraction. Clients who have all their structural elements in place …. house, physical fitness, career, finances …. but are nuking their wife’s attraction by continual shows of weakness in their day-to-day interactions.
Okay, that all sounds good, but what does that look like in real life? How do I apply this to my marriage?
From talking with men who are trying to put all this into action, I know that it’s sometimes difficult to take a theoretical concept like the Attraction Bucket and actually put it into practice in your own marriage. My next post will contain some real life examples of daily interactions that kill attraction and how to fix them.
Hi, I’m Rebecca Watson. Author, Researcher, and Marriage & Attraction Consultant.