4 Brutal Truths Your Son Needs You To Teach Him About Love
You are his best chance for true love.
morrowlight / Shutterstock As a baby, you cradled him when he cried. As a child, you picked him up when he fell off his bike.
And now he's a teenager. Now he needs you to give him advice he may not even know he needs.
Your son is at an age where girls have permanently entered the picture.
So you want him to grow up making responsible decisions, treating women with respect, and if you can create a perfect future, bring the right girl home to raise his own family.
Here are four brutal truths your son needs you to teach him about love:
1. It's OK to express emotions
When your son was little and skinned his knee when he fell down, how did you tell him to react? Was tough love involved? Did you tell him to "suck it up" or "get over it" when he wanted to cry? That's the beginning of his aversion to connecting with his emotions.
If you raise your son to know it's OK to express his feelings and connect with them, it creates a significant amount of maturity as he gets older. When he starts to form relationships with women, he can treat her feelings with the same amount of respect.
He will become comfortable accessing his feelings and he will learn to talk about them openly — a characteristic all women want from the men in their lives.
2. Women want a good guy
The common belief among teenage boys and men is that many girls want "bad boys." What they don't realize is that it's a phase among girls. In the end, strong balanced women (the type you probably hope he will get into a relationship with) don't want to build a life with a "bad boy."
Raise him into the man who really listens, the guy who treats a woman with respect and love. By giving him this insight he'll grow up knowing all the basics of how to do his part in an adult-type relationship. A relationship that will serve both him and his loved ones.
3. Say what you mean
Teenage boys today are all about instant gratification (OK — most of us all still are which is a bad habit!). They get it from their phones, their friends, and yes, probably even you. He thinks the easiest way to get what he wants from a girl is by saying what she wants to hear. WRONG!
This is when you have to step up as a parent and teach your son how to build a reputation as an honest man — especially with girls. Having a truthful reputation holds more power than many other characteristics.
When he's honest about what is going on for him without playing games, girls will feel they can trust him in their professional and personal lives. In all relationships, trust resides at their core.
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4. Never make assumptions
When teenage boys are curious about a girl, they might be more willing to ask everyone else but her. They find no problem in dating a girl based on a herd mentality and that's a major problem.
I'm also sure you've heard the saying “Boys will be boys." You've probably used it a few times to excuse bad behavior on his part. The sad part about "boys will be boys" is that they, eventually, become men.
It's your duty as his parent to inform your son that he should never make assumptions about a girl or just do what his buddies are doing. Teach him to take the time to get to know her and ask her what he wants to know. Not only will she respect him more, but he'll also grow up understanding how to communicate with women better.
If he can work on his communication skills at an early age it will only benefit him all of his life and in all areas of his life because communication plays a pivotal role in all relationships.
Before you know it, your son will be a man, and the life lessons that you instill within him as a teenager will have an effect on the life he lives as an adult. It's up to you to raise him into a man who creates that future relationship with himself and his loved ones.
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Fiona Fine is a relationship and communications expert who specializes in men-women interactions.