What Makes a Man Want to Get Married?

It’s a question a lot of women I know ask themselves over and over. Why am I not attracting a guy who wants to get married? If they have a certain guy in mind they wonder, “What is he looking for?” or “How can I get him to marry me?” or “Why hasn’t he asked me to get married?” They don’t know what it is that compels a man to marry but they suspect it is something they can influence.

Some of us try being sexy, fun and playful thinking that a man will be lured in and want to stay. Some of us try to be indispensable, nurturing him so well that he’ll want you in his life indefinitely. Whatever way you’ve played it, most of us will try everything we can to be what we think he wants us to be.

And that’s the thing, we women get caught up in “what can I do to make him love me?” (consciously or subconsciously) And the underlying thought behind that is “what’s not right with me.” We’ll talk more about that later.

So once we try our hardest to get him to love us (aka marry us) and it doesn’t work, we end up thinking he’s just a jerk or he can’t commit. Then several guys later, we tend to think there are just a bunch of jerks or commitment-phobes out there. But then… sometimes shockingly, he marries the next girl. We wonder “what didn’t I do right and/or what does she have that I don’t.” Then eventually you’re saying to yourself, “what’s wrong with me?”

If you look at married women, they’re usually not what you’d think of as the perfect woman. You wonder how is it that some of them got their husbands to marry them.
And that’s just it. Many of these women didn’t “get” their husbands to marry them. The men chose to marry these women.

So who do men choose to marry?

Alison Armstrong, the creator of “Understanding Men” seminars says that men marry their wives. And she’s right. But what does that mean?

Men will be attracted to and want to date the sexy, playful “Temptress” type. And men will hang out and live for years with the nurturing “Mother” types or a combination of the two. These qualities are important in attracting a man and in sustaining a relationship… but who men will want to marry is a woman that inspires them and feels like their “Queen”.

What does a Queen look like?

This woman will be able to run his castle, hold down the fort when he’s away and watch his back. She has the confidence of a queen, a clear vision of who she is and how to be in command of their realm. She feels like his rock. This is what inspires the man and makes him feel like he can be king of his kingdom.

Men recognize whether a woman is their queen (or not) fairly quickly. It doesn’t take long and then they can’t wait to get married. Armstrong says instinctively after nine months, a woman is usually disappointed if he hasn’t popped the question, but she’ll keep hoping holiday after holiday, year after year that it’ll happen. Not coincidentally, it takes nine months to create a baby… and it doesn’t take much longer for a man to know whether you’re it or not.

The key thing is that a man has to see you as his wife (his queen) and must must must feel inspired to want to marry you.

So how do I become this inspiring Queen?

One of the most important qualities in the queen is confidence.
And one thing I’ve heard out of the mouths of men in Armstrong’s seminars is that probably the most attractive attribute is a woman’s confidence.
It’s an inner confidence that he’s talking about– knowing who she is, holding herself in high regard and being comfortable in her own skin.

How can I show a man that kind of confidence?

If you are with a man and you’re saying to yourself (consciously or subconsciously) “what’s not right with me?” he will see it. Inner confidence starts with loving and accepting yourself and all that you are. If you feel valuable and worthy with or without him, he will sense this. If you honor and respect yourself, he will see that.

Inner confidence allows a woman to be real, to show her real self.
In Armstrong’s seminars, men also said they are attracted to genuine women. A man can smell fakeness a mile away—so that means he can tell if you are trying to be something you are not in order to attract him! Self-acceptance actually allows you to truly be yourself.

So you’re saying if I truly love and accept myself so will a man?

Yes, it’s more likely to happen than not. Why? Because it’s easy to fall in love with someone who loves themselves. If he can see what you love about yourself, you make it easy for him to fall in love. And more importantly, if you are truly being yourself around him he can clearly see if you are his queen. If you fit his personal definition of his queen, then a man will feel inspired to make you a permanent fixture in his life. (If you don’t fit his idea of his wife, he may hang out for years, even decades, but not feel inspired to marry.)

Armstrong also says attracting a man and creating a lasting, happy marriage requires more than just being his queen.
A “Queen” can rule his world, but you will keep him happy and interested if you’re also a little bit of the nurturing “Mother” and the playful “Temptress”.

What if I truly feel confident and I love and accept myself, but I’m still not attracting “the marrying man”?

If you have the self-accepting inner confidence of the “Queen”, but not the playful, flirty “Temptress and the nurturing “Mother” side showing, then a man may not see the balance that he needs in a wife. Not only do men crave those feminine sides of us, but those aspects fulfill other sides of who we really are as women. Expressing all three is fulfilling and rewarding to both ourselves and our men (or the man you want to attract).

And if you’re in a relationship that hasn’t led to marriage, there may be something there you need in order to learn to be “Queenly” and to be ready for your king.

START BY LOVING AND ACCEPTING ALL THAT YOU ARE. AND WHEN YOU MEET HIM, LIVE UNAPPOLOGETICALLY BY FULLY BEING YOURSELF! THE RIGHT MAN WILL SEE YOU AS HIS QUEEN.

Angeline Chew-Longshore is a television news and print journalist specializing in wellness, personal growth, sexuality and women’s issues.

© 2006 Angeline Chew-Longshore

It seems most people say what they really want in life is to be happy.
Everyone I talk to seems to be concerned with happiness. My mom always wants to know if I’m happy. I have a friend that has a really great life and she knows it, but she’s depressed because she thinks she should be happier.

Why do people think the best thing in life is happiness? Why does happiness have to be the goal? When we’re finally happy why is it so short lived?

Is there a way to really find happiness as a final destination and be able to stay happy?

I believe there is and I’ve found it.

I know it feels good when we’re happy, but if that’s what life is all about then it just becomes a balancing act for the sake of staying in that equilibrium of happiness. I say life is about more than that. And if you know that, then you’re on your way to permanent happiness.

So if being happy doesn’t create permanent happiness then what does and how did you find it?

I realized after a long bout of depression and a physical break down that I needed to break down my core system in life. I stopped trying to find happiness and instead I searched for my purpose in life. I really had to slough away all the goal-oriented stuff like career, personal relationships, family, etc. to find the big picture reason of why my soul is here on earth before it moves on to it’s next existence. When it all came down to it, I decided that the reason I am here is for my soul to learn and grow… and also to make connections with other souls so they can learn and grow.

Then I looked at the hard stuff that I had just been through. And I looked back through my life at the lessons I have learned and how much I’ve grown. I realized I have a tremendous reason to be happy. Through all the pain and sadness, anger and grief, I’ve been achieving my “reason for living” all along.

Another turning point for me was when I decided to embrace my sadness and my shame. I had for years been trying to push away the stuff that felt bad because I thought it brought me down, made me less of a person. And I thought, “if I only didn’t have this stuff, everything would be perfect.” But as hard as I tried with all the counseling and self-help, I could never get rid of it. Once I saw all that “stuff” as an enhancement to my character rather than a detriment, that’s when I finally felt free of it. Without being free of it, it was impossible to be happy. I found that crucial to happiness is not just accepting who you are, but completely loving everything that you are.

What brings me permanent happiness is knowing that everything that happens to me is contributing to my soul’s growth, so I am fulfilling my “reason for living” every second of my life. Now when something disturbing happens, I may be in the moment feeling sad, hurt angry or experiencing other emotions, but deep inside I’m actually excited that I’ve been given this new opportunity to grow—and that makes me happy. Even after my one-day-old baby girl died, I knew in my core that I had been given an opportunity to grow. And the profound growth I’ve experienced from it makes me happy. I know, it seems weird, but it is really true.

I don’t look for bad things to happen to me because that is not the only time I feel growth. I feel it sometimes by being still while feeling and observing life rather than thinking. I feel it when engaged in lively or intimate conversation with friends. I feel it when I’m using the creative side of my brain. I feel it when I am doing something that is really helpful to a family member or a friend. I feel it when I look at my husband and experience the depth of my love for him. All of these experiences that we normally feel happy about are not that far away from the other experiences that we feel “bad” about. It’s all just emotion that expands our souls.

If you make this expansion your goal in life, then everything that happens in life is fulfilling. And that is where you find permanent happiness.

So what steps can I take to find happiness?

1. Stop looking for happiness
2. Stop labeling things as good or bad
3. Determine your purpose in life
4. Realize that everything that has happened in your life and what is about to happen leads to achieving your purpose in life
5. Embrace your emotional pain, shame and what you don’t like about yourself
6. Begin to love and accept yourself unconditionally
7. Replace your search for happiness with the goal of expanding your soul through life experience

First off, you want to stop looking for happiness. If you are tallying up the good and the bad in your life, then you will inevitably be focusing on the bad, trying to get rid of it to try to make everything good. In life there is always a balance of things positive and negative. It’s a fact of life that you can’t have one without some of the other. So if you stop seeing things as either good or bad, you realize that things just are a happenstance in this lifetime. Then the “bad is neutralized and becomes just an experience.

Next, take time to determine your purpose in life. I believe where you find true happiness is when you know what your purpose is. And what causes happiness is when you fulfill that purpose daily and knowing that everything happening in your life is leading you to achieving that purpose.

Next stop trying to change who you are and what you don’t like about yourself or the life you’ve been given. Instead, embrace it. See the beauty in all that you are. The imperfections actually make you more interesting. The life that you were born into that you may think of as weird or not normal, embrace that as your own uniqueness that has contributed to who you are today and who you will become tomorrow.

You will begin to love yourself unconditionally and now there is nothing stopping happiness from being a permanent fixture surrounding you always.

LOVE YOURSELF. EXPERIENCE THE EXPANSION OF YOUR SOUL DAILY. SEE HOW IT FULLFILLS YOUR PURPOSE FOR BEING AND HAPPINESS WILL JUST NATURALLY BE YOURS.

Angeline Chew-Longshore is a television news and print journalist specializing in wellness, personal growth, sexuality and women’s issues.

© 2006 Angeline Chew-Longshore

I’ve feel like I’ve found one of life’s secrets! I’ve found a way to basically create anything I want in life—including the perfect husband! I’ve learned to do this over many years of trial and error along with borrowing manifesting techniques from other people until I came up with my own formula that works for me.

I have recently manifested probably one of the biggest things in my life—my husband. He is everything I asked for and more. In the past I’ve manifested jobs that I wasn’t qualified for, money that came out of “nowhere” when I needed it and simple things like always having a parking space even in the most congested cities (LA and San Francisco).

Okay, so how do I do this?

Manifesting requires 5 things.
1. Know what you want and be very specific about it.
2. Believe that you deserve it.
3. Visualize it.
4. Feel it as if it has already happened.
5. Know it’s yours without a doubt.

So what does this look like in the process?

Okay, so I when I wanted to manifest the perfect husband. Here’s what I did:
I wrote down all the things that I would want in him—looks, personality, values, general goals similar to mine, etc. Then I would visualize how my daily life would be with him. And then more importantly, I spent a lot of time feeling how I would feel with this man and what my life would feel like. I would feel that content feeling of being loved, cherished, respected and energized by being in love. I experienced a sense of love and pride within my body acknowledging how it would feel to be a family with him. I would see and feel scenarios of our ski trips, teaching the kids how to ski… or at home, making dinner, sitting on the couch with him with the kids crawling all over us and laughing. Feeling it, so that it would permeate my being– so much so that it became the truth… the truth that just hadn’t happened yet, but was inevitable.

Does this always work?
The short answer is yes. Then why doesn’t it happen for everyone?

Two things that get in the way: doubt and believing you don’t deserve it.
The doubt is usually there because you don’t believe that you deserve it. It’s not always easy to get to the bottom of why you don’t feel deserving, but whether it’s something your parents told you or something else learned, it’s a belief that you’re holding on to. And the reason you’re holding on to it is probably because it feels like some sort of protection from pain.

When I turned 40 and there wasn’t even a possible candidate for a husband in my life, I was discouraged, but instead of doubting, I was just impatient. I was saying, “Where is he already? I know my husband is out there, why isn’t he showing up yet?” I got sad sometimes and worried that I wouldn’t find him in time to have a baby, but there was no doubt in my mind that he existed. So then out of the blue he appeared in the most unlikely way: I met him on vacation in Hawaii and two and a half months later he proposed marriage and said he was ready to start a family. Mind you this is a 28 year-old guy who never wanted to get married or have a baby before that moment.

Here’s how I manifest jobs:
When I go for the interview, I imagine myself passing through the front door and talking to the guard or the receptionist as if I pass through those doors every day. I feel the feeling in my body as if it’s a routine thing to walk down the hall, eat in the lunch room, and I virtually inhabit the place by feeling it in my body. It has worked every time unless I have doubt.

Let’s talk about doubt.
Doubt totally kills the deal. If you have a shred of doubt, it will not happen. The only reason we have doubt is that you don’t believe it can happen. And the core reason you probably can’t see it happening is because you feel you don’t deserve it or you feel you don’t have what it takes to get it.

A lot of doubt comes from what we’ve been told. If you buy into what you’ve been told from someone who claims to know better or buy into what your parents told you as a child… you are limited by those beliefs. My brother-in-law would tell me not to drive to certain neighborhoods in San Francisco during certain hours because he said I wouldn’t find a place to park. (He lived in San Francisco his whole life and I had just moved there.) I would go anyway and I would always find a parking spot because I believed I would.

DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT, KNOW YOU DESERVE IT, BELIEVE THAT IT IS AND IT WILL BE YOURS!

Angeline Chew-Longshore is a television news and print journalist specializing in wellness, personal growth, sexuality and women’s issues.

© 2006 Angeline Chew-Longshore

I think almost everyone gets depressed sometimes. I’ve experienced short-term and long-term depression and yea, it never feels good.

Some quick ways to snap out of light depression is to do something different.

Get out of your routine and do something active and exciting. For me things like hanging on to the edge of a cliff gets me out of my head and in touch with my real self. Your gut fear strips away all the B.S. and you’re left with survival instincts and what’s in your heart. I’ll tell you later why knowing what’s in your heart is important.

So if rock climbing is not your thing, something new like going to a new dance class, a cooking class, learning a new language… or even hiking a new trail might do it. Doing some new activity that is stimulating actually stimulates chemicals in the brain (dopamine) that are the “in love” chemicals. And that’ll help you get out of your funk.

Another simple, yet underrated thing is breathing. When I’m depressed, my breathing gets shallow. When I’m happy or excited or both, my breathing is big and really fills my lungs and nourishes my body. That’s one reason why exercise helps depression (as well as the endorphins that come after the workout) because you’re probably breathing deeper than if you were just sitting around. Breathing helps to quiet the mind and gets you in touch with emotions stored in the body. A yoga breathing technique that my teacher Ross Rayburn showed me actually makes me feel euphoric for a little while. It has to do with breathing in through alternate nostrils. First in through the left and then out through the right, then in through the right and out of the left while alternately closing off each nostril with your thumb or fingers.

I think depression has its purpose.

When I’m depressed, I believe it’s my brain or my wiser-self sending me a message. All I have to do is check in with myself and listen. Sometimes the message is not what we want to hear, so we ignore it and the depression goes on and on. We look at some superficial things and tend to place blame on those things because it’s easy. But it usually is some core issue that you’re not paying attention to and your higher self is saying, “Hey! This is not good for you!” And that depressed feeling is an uneasiness within, knowing that you are actually lying to yourself.

So if depression is so painful then why not face the truth?

Ok, yea, the truth might be painful, but if you face it and admit the truth to yourself, you can act on that truth and clear the pain sooner than later. And you can finally be free of that long-term, never-ending all over sick feeling of depression.

How do you find the truth?

That’s where the heart comes in. Find a way to connect with what’s in your heart. Sometimes it’s getting out of your head and being still for a while. Sometimes that means slowing down and not busying yourself with distraction (activities, lust, drama). That’s a scary thing to ask yourself to do most of the time. Our instinctive fear is that once we slow down, what we’re running from can catch up to us and what will happen then? The fear is so much bigger than the reality of the result that we usually never even give ourselves a chance to slow down to check that out.

In Charlotte Kasl’s book If the Buddha Dated she tells you how to make friends with your fears. She calls it the “then what” exercise. Here’s her example:
“I’m afraid of getting involved, I might get left.”
“Then what (if you do get left)?”
“Well, I’d be alone.”
“Then what?”
“I’d be lonely.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll scream and cry and I’ll be mad.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’d probably get tired and go to sleep.”
“Then what?”

And she points out that the intensity of fear thins out. Your mind may go blank or it’ll start to seem funny because we see how melodramatic our thoughts can be, which is very separate from our true essence of what is in our heart.

When you strip away the fear you can reach the truth. But then how do you know if it’s the truth?
The truth will ring true because you’ll feel a sense of relief when you find it. It may not be a happy thing, but you’re finally admitting it to yourself and now you can do something about it!

BE BRAVE! FACE YOUR FEAR! IT’S SO WORTH IT! DEPRESSION DOESN’T HAVE TO RULE YOUR LIFE!

Angeline Chew-Longshore is a television news and print journalist specializing in wellness, personal growth, sexuality and women’s issues.

© 2006 Angeline Chew-Longshore