i got an interesting forwarded email lately and have been musing about how many responses it got from guys who agreed with what it said. It offers a pretty interesting look at how men get seduced. AND it also deals with that age old debate among us ARPC gals about whether you should just settle for any "godly" guy or be more stringent. heh.
Any male (or female of course) blurkers wanna offer their take?
btw, am changing some of his comments to protect his identity. :)
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"Here's a surprising fact I discovered - In the many divorce cases I have seen, the women responsible for breaking up marriages and families were not as physically attractive as the wives. I used to be a big fan of a marriage counseling book on the different needs of men and women but this threw the theories of that book out the window.
What I found was this. Men have two very deep, very primal emotional needs. Women who choose to meet these needs become irresistible to men. The needs are:
1) to feel happy with who they truly are when they are with a woman
2) to know that this woman is truly happy when she is with them.
But what usually happens after marriage?
The dude comes home after a hard day's work. The first words out of his wife's mouth are a torrent of complaints. And when it comes to Sunday morning, it usually gets worse. The wife is usually the first one up. She'll lovingly prepare breakfast, help pack the kid's stuff and all that.Then barge into the bedrooms of the rest of the family yelling at them that they're gonna be late for church. And after that the wife feels so frustrated and pissed off at why everyone else in the family is grumpier than her even though they got more sleep than she did.
To the dude, married life is a series of minor catastrophies. He is fighting fires day-by-day and he gets tired.
This, ladies, is a dangerous situation. But it's even more dangerous if there are issues that need to be worked out. If the wife is unhappy with the dude over his job, or his pay, or his hobby. And she regularly makes it known by complaining or nagging at him about it. And he gets even more tired.
'Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.' (Pro 21:9) "Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife." (Pro 21:19)
When we dudes look at you and decide that we wanna have a dating/courtship relationship with you, we usually are looking out for red-flags, warning signs that tell us the future problems we're gonna have with you when we get married.
And if we actually propose to you, we do so knowing your problems and hang-ups. We look at them and say "Hey, I can live with them." And we foolishly shrug our shoulders and assume that you ladies look at our problems and hang-ups in the same way too, that if you agree to marry us you're cool with who we really are, warts and all.
That's why, sisters, nagging and complaining about us hits us so badly. It hits us at our core emotional need for acceptance. If the woman I love and choose to spend the rest of my life with is so dissatisfied with me, there must be something really wrong with me. How then can I be happy with being who I really am?
It's kinda like rejection from parents - if the people who brought me into this world think I'm lousy, I must be lousy.
And at this point, any woman who can meet our core needs is gonna affect us powerfully. Hey, it may not even grow to the point of adultery. But doesn't it offend your very sensibilities that it's another woman who makes your husband feel good about being himself, and not YOU?
And if this other woman is genuinely happy when she's with your husband, he's gonna look at her seriously. Even if he's still loyal to you, if he's gotta choose between spending time with you (and hearing you nag) or spending time with her (watching her smile and laugh) who do you think he's gonna choose?
And don't let the marriage vow deceive you into thinking you can get away with emotionally abusing your husband. I had to confront this woman who discovered that her husband, a serious believer, loving father and a husband with a heart of servanthood, fell in love with another woman. It was only his love for God and his children that kept him from actually committing adultery with her.
I had to be the one who told her "If you've been threatening him with divorce at every quarrel (from within the first 3 months of marriage) and constantly telling him how marrying him has totally ruined your future, your hopes, your dreams and your life, how do you think he's gonna feel about anyone who's happy when she's with him?"
I plead with you, don't ever let your marriage go there. Because you know after every quarrel he's wondering why he married you instead of her. He'll be wondering how much longer he can put up with this. And he's gonna be praying "God, deliver me from this marriage!"
Guys, please recognize the power of the two needs I mentioned. You need a woman who makes you happy to be who you really are. And who is truly happy when she's with you. This is the type of woman you WILL love as you love yourself.
On your side the responsibility is this: NEVER commit yourself to a woman who doesn't fulfill these needs, or even worse, is dragging you down in this two areas.
I don't care if she's a pastor, super-model or worship-leader, I don't care how many church meetings, prayer meetings or bible-studies she goes to each week, I don't care how much she's "improved" (God, that word makes me cringe to the very core of my being!) since you first got to know her.
If she makes you unhappy about being you, or you can't see regular evidence that she's happy when she's with you (and don't lie to yourself guys), leave her.
Now.
Because it may be that this woman is unable to fulfill your core needs because of who she is as a person. And if you put her in a position where she HAS to fulfill them even though she can't, you are not being fair to her, putting on her a burden she can't carry.
And if you meet a woman fulfills all these needs for you, recognize this: she's like water to a thirst you may never realized you had. So before you totally lose all ability for rational thought, get a couple of good brothers-in-Christ to check her out and look out for danger signs that you're most probably gonna miss, because you're too deeply in love.
And sisters, when you look for a husband, I plead with you, don't just look for a godly man. Seriously, they abound. Look for a man for whom you fulfill these needs just by being you.
Because if you can fulfill those needs, you WILL respect your husband, as God commands. Effortlessly. It takes genuine respect for who your husband truly is as a person to make him happy to be himself when he's with you. And to be happy when you're with him.
Junk the angmo-nised cookie cutter approach to relationships and marriage that you'll get by browsing the Christian bookshops. The books that get sold there make you believe that marriage is meant to be hard work, and you need to learn 5 love languages, 5 needs of men and women and go through one year of devotionals on becoming soul mates.
After all the experiences I've been through and all the relationships and marriages I've seen, I can honestly tell you from the depths of my heart, if you're not soul mates to begin with, you won't be even after going through all those books, seminars and message CDs.
Finally, brothers and sisters, spend lots of time in God's presence. Because through the blood of Christ he's given you a darn good reason to be happy with who you truly are as a person and he's overjoyed whenever you're with him. And when you get used to having those two needs met by God, you'll recognize it when you meet that special someone who'll meet those needs for you."
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