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How Alison Armstrong is ending the battle of the sexes

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Alison Armstrong was a successful focused-thinking businesswoman and activist, but her relationships were suffering. Until she listened to a lateral-thinking friend one day, and changed her way of thinking and relating to men in order to save her child's self esteem. It takes a lot of courage to admit you were wrong; it takes a pretty amazing woman to start a whole new business based on her mistake.

From homeless issues advocate to relationship adviser

Alison acted as chairman of the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force from 1989 to 1991, and in 1990 founded the Orange County Summit for Children.

In order to succeed in a male-dominated environment, Alison felt she needed to be seen as powerful. She later realised that her instinct to attract a man to her and then crush his spirit stemmed from a fear that men were stronger than her and would harm her if she didn't disable them first. In business, she got a lot out of the people she worked with, but also had a high staff turnover. Her personal relationships were just a mess.

When Alison's friend, Ellen, pointed out to her that her mistreatment of men was including her three-year-old son, Alison realised she'd been studying men for the purpose of gathering intelligence in the war between the sexes. She knew that men were drawn to her and wanted to do things for her and she felt compelled to weaken them at any opportunity. During her conversation with Ellen, Alison finally understood that her tactics came from her own perceived weakness, not from power as she'd deluded herself into believing.

At that moment Alison made the decision to stop manipulating and emasculating men, and to learn to communicate with them instead. Alison says, "I had already seen how much men wanted to solve problems, in fact, were compelled to solve problems. What if women presented men with a different set of problems? For example, instead of wasting their energies on 'Try to get out of this conversation about our relationship alive', what might the outcome be if men focused on 'How would you end world hunger?' If men weren’t being weakened by women, they could direct all that power towards solving problems worthy of their dignity and their honor."

After four years of reshaping her thinking about men, and studying their behaviour and communication language from a place of acceptance and desire to understand, Alison decided to share what she'd learnt with other women, as well as men who wanted to understand why women react as they do to men. Alison believed that the best way to prevent the homelessness of children that she was targeting, was to help parents prevent problems in their relationship from destroying the family unit in the first place.

You can read more about Alison's story here: Ending the War Between the Sexes, Personally

I discovered Alison's programmes while I was on Alannis Morissette's website. We'll have to wait and see, but I think Alison might be responsible for a future lack of angsty relationship break down lyrics from Alannis, who's now seeing the men in her life in a completely new light.

If you would like to try and understand the opposite sex better, you may like

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray

What Women Want Men to Know by Barbara De Angelis

Understanding Men by Lance McKeithan