Becoming Your Spouse's Better Half (23 page)

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Authors: Rick A Johnson

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Additionally, many young men complicate this cycle of woundedness by falling into the trap of feeling the need to “rescue” a damsel in distress. They see a broken young woman and instinctively try to rescue her. This is a behavior programmed into men—the need to be saviors and fix problems, especially of women and children. It’s a good man who does this. Unfortunately, a husband can rarely fix the problems that are at the core of his wife’s womanhood.
We all have wounds in our hearts or holes in our souls. Many people try to fill those empty spaces with drugs, alcohol, sex, power, or money to deaden the pain. But the truth is only God’s love and forgiveness fill those wounds. Those wounds and the ways we try to soothe them also contribute to this distortion of how God perceives us. Many women believe that because of things they’ve done or mistakes they’ve made in the past, God will not or cannot forgive them. This is just not true, but guilt prevents them from allowing God’s forgiveness to enter their hearts.
God can heal our wounds, but we must open them up and give them to him so that through his forgiveness, love, grace, and mercy, we can eventually forgive ourselves and even learn to love ourselves. And once we love ourselves, we can love others with even more grace, depth, and beauty.
Guys, you are the only man in the world who can counteract any negative perceptions your wife’s father or the world might have placed on her. As her husband, you are the only man besides her father whom God has granted the power to influence her in the core of her being. As a man, you know you have a fragile ego regarding your performance and your adequacy. Your wife’s self-image regarding her beauty and value as a woman is just as fragile. When you love her, cherish her, respect her, and honor her, it can heal some of those wounds that damaged her heart. Please be conscious of that power and use it responsibly. If you use it poorly or not at all, it can cause even greater, irreversible damage.
Ladies, if you did not have a father growing up or had a poor role model for a father, it is vitally important that you look to your heavenly Father to fill that role in your life. He is a father who will always love you and care for you. His motives are always in your best interest. He never wishes harm on you. Without his love and healing, you are likely to continue making poor choices such as those modeled for you. Unfortunately, your husband cannot fulfill that role and those needs for you—only God can.
God loves you as a woman just the way he created you. You are a daughter of Eve, the magnificent culmination of his creation. It doesn’t matter what you look like, how old you are, how much you weigh, how smart and accomplished you are, or how many mistakes you’ve made. He loves the inside of you—your heart, your entire being. That part deep down inside you that you never share with anyone else. He knows you even better than you know yourself—all of your imperfections and faults. Yet he still loves you unconditionally and willingly forgives all your sins and shortcomings. He always welcomes his children home with a Father’s loving arms, no matter how far they’ve strayed.
Ask God for the fatherly love you should have gotten from your earthly father. Then allow him to heal the wounds of your heart so you can reap the rich blessings in life you deserve.
 
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
—Love the fact that God made her so different.
Women often have a closer, deeper spiritual relationship with God than men do.
Women are probably more willing to humble themselves before God than men are.
A woman’s earthly father plays a huge role in how she perceives her heavenly Father.
A woman is generally the first spiritual teacher in her children’s lives.
A woman sees herself in the mirror as flawed, not as God does.
 
Get inside Her Head
This world is so frightening that I need an omnipotent God to rely upon.
My father is disappointed in me, so how can God not be disappointed in me as well?
I wish my husband would lead our family spiritually so I wouldn’t have to.
I hate the way I look—I’m unattractive and overweight.
 
Words Have Meaning
 
Words That Heal
“Honey, will you pray with me tonight?”
“Kids, let’s get ready for church!”
“God thinks you’re awesome, and so do I.”
“We’ll get through this with God’s help.”
 
 
Words That Hurt
“Only weak people rely on religion as a crutch.”
“All Christians are hypocrites.”
“I wish you would quit bugging me to go to church.”
“Would you lighten up? You don’t need to be such a Goody Two-shoes all the time.”
Women’s Mood
# 7
 
Girlfriends
 
The Sisterhood
 
 
 
What I expect from my male friends is that they are polite and clean. What I expect from my female friends is unconditional love, the ability to finish my sentences for me when I am sobbing, a complete and total willingness to pour their hearts out to me, and the ability to tell me why the meat thermometer isn’t supposed to touch the bone.
Anna Quindlen,
Living Out Loud
 
 
T
here is probably nothing more vital to a woman’s satisfaction in life than to have one or more girlfriends. Having another woman to talk to, relate with, process information with, empathize with, and revel in her company is necessary to a woman’s health and emotional well-being.
I heard Dr. James Dobson say something very profound on his radio show once. He referred back to the days when women used to have a stronger bond and community with each other. Everything they did—washing clothes, preparing meals, raising kids—they did together. Today there is an absence of these kinds of powerful, nurturing relationships that women need.
Dr. Dobson stated that when a husband comes home from work, the wife often looks to him to fulfill needs created by the lack of female relationships. These needs are critical to her life, but a man cannot fill them. One woman said, “Having women in my life is definitely important and as necessary to my overall serenity as air! They are the ones I trust to understand the journey and who may be the only gender that could understand why the books I talk about are romantic.”
Women need girlfriends to help satisfy the need that a man cannot fill. While a man quickly runs out of words, a girlfriend can actively listen and participate in the conversation on her level. A girlfriend will be involved in the conversation, laugh, cry, be empathetic, offer assistance, and be supportive. One of Suzanne’s co-workers once told me, “We can laugh at the silly things, talk over a cup of coffee, go to lunch, and shop till we drop.” Girlfriends are a woman’s extended family. A woman’s girlfriends help keep her emotionally stable, psychologically balanced and content, and physically healthy.
But there are other, even better reasons why your wife should have girlfriends.
Shopping
 
For women, shopping is today’s equivalent of gathering roots and berries. For most of the history of the world, women came together to do a variety of activities. This communal behavior included gathering food, cooking, and making necessities such as blankets and clothing. Women got together to share woes, watch each other’s kids, swap stories, and be productive. They learned from one another, with young girls interfacing directly with older female role models. Today, with families strung out across the country, women rely on friends, and increasingly the Internet, for connectedness. Because women are so relational, they need other women who can understand their needs and concerns.
I’ve observed this need for female bonding up close and personal in our home. My daughter, much like my wife, seems to relate better to males than females and has a hard time making girlfriends. But she has a yearning for female companionship that keeps her searching for a friend who can sit and chat, shop, and cry with her. I have also noted a yearning she has to learn from older females. She has been frustrated in her attempts to get older women to nurture and advise her. Perhaps because of this, my wife and daughter are bonded closely, but I sense each longs deeply for other, outside associations.
Guys, encourage your wife to have healthy girlfriends. If nothing else, it gives her someone besides you to go shopping with. That way you do not have to go from store to store looking at “cute” shoes all day. (Do men have cute shoes? What would that look like?) And how are you supposed to answer that inevitable question, “How does this look on me?” There’s no good answer. That question only leads down a slippery path laden with quicksand, tangled and prickly undergrowth, and poisonous vipers. Even the most adventurous and foolhardy man treads carefully down that dark and lonely path of no return. The average guy, if quick on his feet, just nods and smiles. Since she ignores what you say about clothes anyway, it just reinforces her opinion that you are clueless about fashion and thus lowers her expectations of you in this area. It can be a dangerous strategy (you need to have a vague but unoffending response ready if she forces you to talk), but it’s the best one I’ve found to navigate these shark-infested waters.
And there’s not anything much more embarrassing than standing around looking dim-witted outside the ladies’ dressing room, holding an armful of women’s unmentionables. I made the mistake of being along once when my wife and daughter went shopping for bras. I kid you not, it was
the
most grueling, excruciatingly painful experience of my life. After eight hours of trying on every bra in the store, they were just getting ramped up. They flung discarded bras out of the dressing rooms so fast and furious that some of them landed on my head and shoulders. Besides feeling like a pervert for standing around in the women’s underwear section all day, I could have read
War and Peace
in the time it took them to find a bra, had I not been so faint from hunger.
Since I had already memorized every square foot of merchandise in the store by this time, I started reading the employee rules on the bulletin board and sighing loudly and dramatically every few minutes. The women who worked in the store just looked at me with disdain, and the male employees gave me looks of pity while scurrying about their business so as not to get inadvertently sucked into an estrogen vortex. They knew a desperate guy when they saw one, and even though sympathetic, they didn’t want anything to do with me.
I’m not sure why, but I can work out at the gym, go for a long bike ride in the mountains, and swim laps and still not be as exhausted as I am after shopping for an hour. Women are brutal when they shop. As near as I can tell, women who are focused on shopping see nonrelated men as inanimate objects to be pushed aside without acknowledgment if they are in the way, and related men to be handy pack mules that they don’t even feel obligated to feed and water every so often.
There’s something about standing around on those cold, hard floors while being pushed around by every woman intent on getting a bargain that is just plain draining. I have been bumped, elbowed, stepped on, and hissed at during sales events—and that was at a Christian bazaar. One lady looked at me like, “You don’t belong here, Junior, so get out of the way before someone gets hurt!” It’s like a combat zone out there—every so often a strange woman jumps out from behind a counter and sprays you in the eyes with some kind of toxic gas labeled “perfume.” High heels puncture your toe as a woman dashes past you to grab the last Donna Karan suit reduced to 70 percent. Saleswomen are trained to ignore you except when they deftly swipe the credit card out of your hand like an experienced pickpocket, all the while chatting with your wife like a long-lost friend.
Some stores provide a “man chair” outside the women’s dressing room, for which I am truly grateful. It’s generally a wobbly, hard, metal folding chair. Unfortunately, if you don’t move every so often, the women start piling discarded clothes on you like a clothing rack. I want to find a store that provides a separate air-conditioned room with a soft leather recliner, a TV turned to a sports channel, snacks, and ice-cold beverages for men whose women are trying on outfits. Since women wear clothes for other women, not men, a saleslady should patiently stand outside the dressing room door and answer that dreaded question about how she looks in each outfit. That would be my idea of shopping. But I digress. . . .
Okay, I’m poking fun at women’s love of shopping, but the truth is that it is a talent and requires specific skills that many men lack. In fact, there are logical reasons that women shop longer than men do. Women take in and retain much more information when they walk into a room. Women have a 360-degree perspective on life and, when shopping, evaluate products and services by how they fit into that bigger picture. Women are interactive in their shopping style and are more likely to try on, test, and sample products before purchasing, and they tend to imagine how they will interact afterward with the products in their daily lives. Because they are relational, women interact more with sales associates and get more peer and expert opinions for their purchases than men.
1
Hence, women have a need for a longer and more fulfilling shopping experience.

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