Becoming Your Spouse's Better Half (18 page)

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Authors: Rick A Johnson

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She also likes to play sometimes. This frivolous time might include my tickling or chasing her or our lying together in a meadow looking up at the sky. Perhaps just my good-natured teasing tells her I love and respect her. Again, it means my focus is on her and I am not distracted by other matters. She loves spending time together playing board games, talking, going on a picnic, or just sitting together listening to music. Other times she might want to hike, play golf, go boating or bowling, or even play softball. What seems to be most important to her is that I remember to include her in my life and not be preoccupied with other things too frequently when I am with her.
Dreams
 
Most women have a creative side to them that needs to be expressed. A woman needs her own “garden” of creativity to tend, a place she can go to be refreshed and invigorated. This plot will get bigger as the children grow older, when many women feel free to start actively tending their dreams that they have been holding on to while raising the kids. Oftentimes women who spend all day raising children don’t feel like they are using their gifts and talents to contribute to the world.
This creative side can be expressed in as many different ways as there are different women. For some it is working in the garden, for others arranging flowers. They may paint or sculpt. Some have hobbies such as scrapbooking, quilting, knitting, book or card clubs, dancing, or playing an instrument. Others can soak in nature in the outdoors, either through a quiet walk in the woods or through physical activities such as kayaking, biking, horseback riding, or rock climbing. They may quietly curl up and read a good book or just have some time to themselves to dream and decompress from the pressures of life. For some women, going back to work, going back to school, or changing careers may be a way to stimulate their creative energy.
Because women are such creative beings (they create and nurture life), the ability to make things gives them a sense of peace and satisfaction. Learning a new task or accomplishing something is rewarding and stimulating. Because they constantly use their multitasking skills, this creative side allows them a release to express themselves.
Find ways to help your wife create and tend her literal or figurative garden. With small children, a woman may be able to tend this side of her personality only in small doses. Give her time to clear her head and do something just for herself. Let her have a personal day during the week to spend by herself where she can go to a bookstore or the library, go to the gym, or walk the aisles of the local farmer’s market. Ask yourself,
My wife put her dreams on hold for me and the kids. What can I do to help her tend her dreams?
Because we men are typically more task oriented, we often don’t understand this creative side of women. While we’re creative too (we rebuild cars, do woodwork, or collect things), our creativity is often goal oriented or performance based, whereas a woman’s tends to be more nurturing and revitalizing.
Her dreams are important to her, and they need to be tended. If you can do this for her, you will have a much more satisfied and contented woman on your hands. That spells good news for you no matter how you slice the cake.
Goals
 
Because of the sacrificial nature of nurturing and raising children, many women set aside their goals and plans until after the children have grown. It’s a huge sacrifice to make in the bigger picture of things. To set aside twenty years of your life in a cause to raise and nurture children and a family is a sacrifice I’m not sure most men would be willing to endure. Striving for my dreams and the goals I’ve set in life is something I’ve been accustomed to for most of my life. Certainly I have forfeited a few things along the way, but for the most part my life has been about me while still within the context of fulfilling my responsibilities and obligations.
Yet many women make that sacrifice gladly. Once the kids are older or grown and gone, it is a good time for them to revisit their goals. This might mean going back to college and getting a degree, or beginning or going back to a career they started years before.
Many women are also now starting their own businesses.
Working Mother
magazine reported that women-owned businesses open at twice the rate of male-owned businesses. According to the US Census Bureau, women-owned businesses employed nearly 9.2 million workers as of 2002. The US Small Business Administration reports that women-owned businesses generated $2.38 trillion annually in revenues for the US economy.
1
We know one woman who, after the children went off to college, started her own scrapbooking company that has grown from a simple home business to a rather large international company. She combined a hobby she enjoyed with her goal to create a business and is now reaping the benefits. She found that many of the skills she employed as a stay-at-home mother for all those years—like organizational and interpersonal communication skills—helped her as a businesswoman.
Fragile
 
The other side of this playful aspect to a woman’s personality is that sometimes she becomes fragile and needs a lift to get her back into the groove. Because women are created with more hormones and are more complex physiologically, it often means that their highs are higher and their lows are lower than men’s. In these situations, a man can be a big support by understanding what she is feeling and helping her feel better about her world.
One way to know when my wife is feeling vulnerable is to note how she describes it when she is in this mood. She feels overwhelmed and paralyzed, her head gets fuzzy, and she can’t do even little tasks. When this happens, she needs me to just hold her and listen to everything she says. Sometimes I have to give her a differing perspective on life. For instance, when she is discouraged I might need to show her how she is positively touching the lives of those around her. I need to give her some encouragement and help her to look at a “treetop” view of her life—the big picture. When she is fragile, she might need me to make her some soup or give her a foot massage. I also need to encourage her during these low-mood days to have a cry, take a nice long bubble bath, get into some snuggly pajamas, and watch a cooking show on TV. Not exactly how I would tend to myself, but it is what she needs to heal and pamper herself.
 
A woman is a complex, multilayered creature who needs to be stimulated in a variety of areas in order to be fulfilled. She has a creative side that needs to be tended and nurtured. She needs to be able to feel safe and protected by her husband when she is feeling vulnerable or scared. This allows her to feel secure enough to be playful when she needs to relax. The ability to play with someone means she has an authentic intimacy with that person.
Lastly, she has likely set aside or sacrificed her life goals for the benefit of her family. When she decides to achieve those goals, she will need your support and encouragement. That’s what masculine leadership does—it helps people achieve their potential and lifts them up to be all they want and desire.
 
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
—Love the fact that God made her so different.
Women have a little girl side that needs to express itself through playfulness.
Women need to be encouraged to nurture their creative side.
When they have a family, many women set aside their goals and dreams to focus on nurturing their children.
Women are complex creatures who need to express their many facets in order to feel fulfilled.
 
Get inside Her Head
I love it when my husband playfully chases me and isn’t so serious.
What good is life if you can’t have fun once in a while?
I wonder if I could ever become a sculptor?
I’ve always wanted to go back to school but don’t know if I should or not.
 
Words Have Meaning
 
Words That Heal
“Sure, I’ll rototill the side yard so you can plant a garden.”
“Let’s go to the park and play on the merry-go-round.”
“If you want to start a business, I think it’s a great idea. What can I do to be supportive?”
“Honey, now that the kids are grown, what have you always wanted to do with your life?”
 
 
Words That Hurt
“Quit acting silly all the time.”
“I can’t deal with your Peter Pan attitude anymore.”
“Grow up and take responsibility for your life.”
“Dreams are just that. They are never meant to be real.”
Women’s Mood
# 4
 
Nurturing
 
Tending the Nest
 
 
 
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.
Dave Barry
 
 
I
f men were created for the roles of providing and protecting, then one of the most significant roles God gave to women is that of nurturing.
God designed your wife to be more nurturing than you. Without her gifts in this area, a family would never be able to survive, much less thrive. (Admit it, guys—left up to you, the kids would eat way more pizza and burgers than is healthy, and you’d all wear the same clothes several times over before they hit the washing machine.)
A wife has the capability of being empathetic whenever anyone is feeling bad, comforting when they are wounded, and healing when they are in pain. She is more often than not caring, kind, thoughtful, gentle, compassionate, loving, and sensitive. She feels compelled to make sure the children are safe, fed properly, washed, and clean with all their needs met. Her presence helps children thrive and grow like vigorous stalks of corn in fertile soil. Her nurturing instincts bring vitality to family life. Her healing touch cures everything from scraped knees to bruised egos. Her gentle compassion soothes even the most horrendous betrayal.
Women love to encourage and support other people in their search for meaning in their lives. They love to share their life experiences with one another. They like to help others with their problems.
Women are the nurturers of the family that keep it functioning and growing. Frankly, the mortality rate would probably be a lot higher if men were left alone to their own devices with their children. Quite a few of us guys have forgotten our toddlers somewhere and had to go back and get them, or have inadvertently let something happen to them that narrowly avoided a disaster—which fortunately our wives never found out about.
But because women have bigger hearts than men do, they are also more easily broken. I think Peter referred to a woman as the “weaker” vessel not as an insult to her mental or physiological strength, but for her more fragile and tender heart (1 Peter 3:7).
Tender Mercies
 
Our wives are a lot more tenderhearted than we are. Women are more gentle and caring about people and their feelings. Women tend to be more unconditional in their love, while men are more performance-based in theirs. Women are generally more accepting of others and their faults than men are. Women are more apt to fall for a sob story or try to rescue someone who claims to have been mistreated. They are more attuned to their emotions and sensitive to nuances and shifts in relationships. In fact, their thinking process is fueled by emotion, hence they think emotionally rather than in a linear fashion like men do. Men think of things in a logical progression—in other words, if we do this and then that, this will be the result (A + B = C)—but women’s minds think of many different, and often unrelated, topics all at the same time. Men compartmentalize their thoughts and emotions, but women think on many levels. And the billions of synapses between the neurons of a typical woman’s brain all appear to connect with each other in a frenzy of information overload (at least from the perspective of a linear-thinking being).

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