Ways to Submit (for women AND men), prt. 1
Joint Lecture w/ Christy Flowers, M.A.
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
March 21, 2010
About six years ago Christy and I did a joint sermon based on the book His Needs, Her Needs, by Willard Harley. We got a lot of positive feedback on it and quite a few people asked if we could do it again. We had talked about doing it this past February, but with the need to bring financial and building information to you, we just weren’t able to fit it in. So we’re going to do this today and next week. Then, on Easter Sunday, we’re actually going to begin a brand-new series from the Gospel of John, and I hope you will be inviting your friends to that service. We don’t want to have your friends coming on Easter and END a series on that day – far better to kick off a new one on that day, so that is the plan.
Back to Willard Harley. Harley wrote a book in 1986 called His Needs, Her Needs. You might think, “1986? That was almost 25 years ago.” And of course you’d be right. But ten years later, in May of 1996, His Needs, Her Needs entered its forty-second printing. I can’t even imagine what it’s up to now. So if you’ll allow me to don my marriage counselor hat for a moment, I want to just lend a little cred to this book, especially here 25 years after it was written. It was based on the clinical experience of Dr. Willard Harley and the observations come from about thirty-thousand hours of work with couples. If Harley were to write His Needs, Her Needs today, I think the needs would probably be pretty much the same. Then again, I don’t think it matters all that much, because far more important than what the particular needs are that are listed is whether or not you as a spouse are attentive to your spouse’s needs and willing to place them at the top of your priority list. If that is your attitude, then whether it is this book, or Love and Respect, or Prepare/Enrich, or the work of John Gray or John Gottman or Gary Smalley, chances are good that you will be able to use marriage-building principles to make your marriage better. In the final analysis, it is attentiveness and openness that matters most.
I like His Needs, Her Needs not only because I think the list of needs is almost timeless, but because it is presented as a list. It is easy to teach to other people and pretty easy to remember. I also like how it presents a woman’s top needs and a man’s top needs. Of course this isn’t to imply that women don’t have the needs on the men’s list, or that every man or woman will have every need on their list, or that men won’t sometimes find that the needs on the women’s list seem to fit them more or that women may not sometimes find that the needs on the men’s list fit them better. Admittedly, these are generalities, but there’s no way we can ever talk about more than one couple at a time if we don’t generalize. Still, overall, I think the lists are pretty solid.
Next, I want to tell you something important about how to use the information Christy and I will be giving you today and next week. You should be able to listen to these messages and put a few of the principles into action and see a difference in your marriage fairly quickly. If you cannot even imagine trying any of these things until your spouse pulls it together and meets your needs first, or if you have no desire to meet your spouse’s needs, or if trying to talk about these things produces angry arguments, your marriage needs more help than what we can give here and I hope you will see me about a referral for counseling. Seriously, every marriage no matter how good should be able to get better with application of these principles, and if yours cannot – for any of the reasons I’ve listed – it’s because you simply need more in-depth help than we can give in this format.
It’s safe to say men and women are different. Usually they are radically different. I was telling Christy yesterday that in my opinion there are two critical things that should be required in our schools. One is principles of financial responsibility and money management and the other is a class on how the sexes can better understand one another. Truly. Boys and girls are just put into school with each other and left to find out on their own how deep the divide can be between them. This of course is a source of constant heartache beginning even in grade school. And then, of course, after we have crashed and burned in one relationship after another in jr. high and high school, we then go into the work world and have to work with the other sex and are just as confused there as we were in school. Then we find that getting married doesn’t even cure the confusion – if anything it deepens it. We just really struggle sometimes to understand each other. I think it’s a shame that in this critical area of life we are left to completely fend for ourselves. It’s no wonder people are so resistant to getting counseling. You can go all the way to the Ph.D level in our educational system and never learn a single thing about how to relate to the opposite sex. This would be no big deal, of course, if that had no effect on your life, but of course ignorance in this area causes a lot of pain and suffering. At least we could send the signal at an early age that the other sex is different and that we must be intentional if we are to hope to understand them at all.
Often the failure of men and women to meet each other’s needs is due to ignorance and not selfish unwillingness to be considerate. But whether it is due to ignorance or to hostility, one thing is certain: chronic neglect of a spouse’s needs produces a hole in the life of the spouse that aches to be filled and leaves him/her very vulnerable to an affair. That’s why Harley’s book is subtitled Building an Affair-Proof Marriage.
And so it is your responsibility to meet your spouse’s needs. Yours. No one else is responsible, and you don’t WANT anyone else to be responsible for that, do you? Women, do you want some other woman taking care of your man sexually? Men, do you want some other guy showering affection on your wife? Of course not. The truth is, it is up to you. If you know your spouse’s needs and then chronically neglect to meet them over a long period of time, you are largely responsible for what the consequences may be. On the other hand, if you find out what those needs are and then attend carefully to meeting those needs, chances are very high you will not suffer the pain of an affair. People generally do not risk going outside of the marriage to get needs met that are already being met in their marriage. And on a very basic level, a person who knows their spouse’s deepest needs, but chronically neglects them, is mean, however they may justify what they are doing.
So what leads to conflict in marriage? There are generally two causes:
1. Couples make each other unhappy. This is intentional harm.
2. Couples simply fail to make each other happy – neglect through lack of care/knowledge about one another’s needs.
When couples fail to consistently meet each other’s basic needs, resentment begins to build and leads to intentional and unintentional words and actions that harm one another, causing deep pain that eventually leads to divorce. As I heard recently, a husband asked his wife if she thought divorce was a sin. “I don’t know," she said. “But the nasty stuff that leads up to it certainly is.”
So we’re going to walk you through a husband’s and a wife’s five deepest needs, today and next week. I will talk to the men about a woman’s needs, and Christy will talk to the women about a man’s needs. So at this point I’ll turn it over to Christy and let her kick off the needs-list.
Top 5 Needs of Men:
1. Sexual Fulfillment
2. Recreational Companionship
3. An Attractive Spouse
4. Domestic Support
5. Admiration
An Attractive Spouse
I want to start by addressing number three on the list. Men want an attractive spouse. According to Willard Harley, a man takes pride in the appearance of his wife. Harley says he takes a lot of flak for this particular chapter from women saying it feeds into the beauty/youth movement in America. But his results came from polling men. It’s not his opinion, but the opinion of the men polled and therefore it is important for women to not brush this point off. He explains that he’s not saying women need to try to be eternally youthful, but he says, “Attractiveness is what you do with what you have.”
I think about the TV sitcoms that show a husband walk into the house after work. There is the stay-at-home mom dressed in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt with stains on it, holding a baby on her hip with her hair pulled up in a ponytail with stray hair sticking up and falling all over. She’s not wearing any make-up and she is also not wearing a smile. We can all picture that, right? Can we also picture the husband’s face? Does he look thrilled to come home to that or does he look a little disappointed?
Okay ladies, like it or not, men are visual. Women can look inside and are willing to love and accept men that may be heavy, bald, or maybe even unattractive. Women tend not to be as visually driven. Men are more visually driven. It is how they are wired, so to affair proof a marriage we can take easy steps to improve how attractive we are to our husbands.
Think back to what Harley suggested “Attractiveness is what you do with what you have.” Take what you have and work it! Think about it like this, when you go out to have dinner with your girlfriends do you make more of an effort to look nice for them than you do for your husband on a daily basis? If you work out of the home, do you put in extra effort to look nice for co-workers or clients? Doesn’t your husband deserve to be the one you look nice for? His opinion should be the most important opinion about how you look.
The men polled are looking for attractive wives. They want them to have attractive hairstyles, use make-up, be fit and dress fashionably. Harley said men appreciate women that make an effort to look their best. He says, “An attractive woman is made, not born.” It takes effort, but the payoff is worth it when your husband responds to your efforts.
The top five needs for a woman are as follows:
1. Affection
2. Conversation
3. Honesty and openness
4. Financial support
5. Family commitment
Like Christy, I want to start with number three.
Honesty and openness
A woman wants to feel like a man has taken her into his confidence and allowed her into his world. Men who are not honest with their wives can be broken into three groups:
a. Some people are born liars. People who are born liars have lied all their lives and will probably never change. Hopefully, women, you are not married to a born liar.
b. Some men lie to avoid trouble. He forgets to do something she asked. When she asks about it later, he claims it’s all set, fully intending to do it that day, but then forgets again. So when the task goes undone, he may make up another lie to cover for the first two. This kind of lying can be managed by the husband coming to understand it as lying, and the wife finding better ways to express her disappointment when she feels he isn’t coming through. We don’t have time to get deeply into this, but it’s big.
c. Some men lie because they feel they are protecting their wives. This is common in men especially in regard to finances. These guys are usually well-intentioned, realizing their wives need security and seeking to provide it by hiding the truth from them. This has a lot to do with a man needing to feel successful as a provider, but this kind of lying can do a great deal of harm to a marriage.
Guys, take your wife into your confidence. Let her into your world. Make her feel like your partner and confidante, not like a burden to you. Don’t lie to her. Ladies, when you’re disappointed with your husband, be gentle. Their opinion of themselves is more deeply rooted in how they think you feel about them than almost anything else. If in the way you speak to him you communicate he is a failure, he’ll think of himself as a failure, and probably find ways to cover it up when he has made a mistake. Guys, jokes are okay when they’re really jokes and don’t go too far, but careful on the treating your wife like she’s the boss, and the ball and chain. If you regularly speak of her that way, don’t be surprised to find her increasingly acting that way. Men and women will rise to the level their spouse thinks of them. They will also fall to that level.
Domestic Support
Item #4 on what a man desires is Domestic Support. The men said they want to come home from work to a home that is well-kept, warm and peaceful. I remember when Dave and I went to our pre-marriage counseling and the counselor asked if we had discussed the division of domestic duties. We had and we answered that we both agreed it would be fifty-fifty. I mean after all it was 1988 and we weren’t living in the Leave-it-to-Beaver Cleaver 1950’s, right?
I believe Dave had the best intentions of being 50/50. I think I’m really fortunate with how much Dave does around the house, but 50/50? It ain’t happening. In the book, Harley explains that as archaic as it seems, men really do dream of the Leave-it-to-Beaver scenario. They work hard all day and are under a tremendous amount of stress. They’d like to come home and have a nice meal, prepared by their wife, and then relax and enjoy being in his clean home with his beautiful bride and well-mannered children. The male need for his wife to “take care of things” -especially him- is widespread, persistent, and deep.
The liberation movement of the 70’s supposedly changed the way American couples operated. Yes, many more women are working full-time outside of the home, but what didn’t change was that the men still have a deep desire to be taken care of at home. It is how they are wired. Many wives also go to work all day and are under a tremendous amount of stress. They too would like to come home and have a nice meal. The reality is that in more cases than not, the men still desire that it be the wife that takes care of the meal.
The great dilemma is the division of labor. Willard Harley mentioned that men are a tight lipped bunch. They don’t often like to share their feelings, especially on this issue, because they will get treated like they are cavemen. Right ladies? But remember your husband has feelings. He is wired the way he is wired and that’s not his fault. So step one is to find out what he wants. In his counseling practice, Harley gives clients a Domestic Support Inventory to discover the domestic duties that give husbands the most pleasure. He then recommends working together to create a plan that is satisfying for both parties. This can be very difficult when wives work outside the home. I know, I am a working wife. Husbands of women who feel overwhelmed by responsibility often feel that their needs are the last to be met. Everything and everyone else seems to be more important. When you sit down to talk about what domestic needs would make your husband the happiest, ask if he feels like he’s last on your list. The answer may be hard to hear, but it’s an answer that you need to hear and take note of.
Step two is to make a plan that you can both be happy with. It will require some give and take, especially if the wife is working outside the home. But honest communication from both parties will help in the process. The third step is to just do it! If you know your husband wants to always find clean socks and underwear in his drawers when he opens them, then make sure he finds clean socks and underwear in his drawers. If that’s not important to him but a home cooked family dinner after work is, then plan ahead and make it happen. I’m exhausted after a full day of high energy teaching. Cooking is not what I want to do, but the satisfaction it brings Dave makes me feel really good. The other day, I invited Dave to join me and we cooked together for over an hour. We prepared two of our family’s favorite meals and we had a great time working and talking together. Plus we had healthy meals for the family prepared for the week. It was awesome.
Work together to make a plan and then work the plan.
The other need I want to cover with you is the need for financial support. This is not always true, but even today married women tend to resent having to work when their jobs must go to provide for the basic support of the family. I know things are a bit different now, but it’s interesting that in 1986, Harley had never met a single woman in his 30,000 hours of experience who was content with a husband who was not earning enough money to provide for his family’s basic needs.
This one fascinates me, guys. I know of couples who have decided that the man will stay home with kids and the woman will work, and they seem to be pretty happy. But I think it’s notable that even in those cases, a choice was made after a mutual discussion. I think even today most women would be deeply unhappy with a man who simply assumed she was going to work while he stayed at home. And I think generally in our society we would still apply the word “freeloaders” to such men. Regardless of how much progress we have made, relationships generally function best when a woman is able to make a decision about whether and how often she will work. Of course in order to be able to make this choice, every couple must be very aware of the difference between wants and needs.
Christy mentioned that there are certain ways men like to feel taken care of. This is a way most women like to feel taken care of. I have also noticed that most women have a deep need for financial stability and security. Most women I know get very nervous when their husband starts talking about switching jobs. I think that need for financial security gets to the critical role that money plays as the fountain of life. Money is literally the means of survival. So guys, when we support our wives financially, when we work hard and take care of them, when we allow them as much choice as possible in whether or not they will work, that provides a critical foundation for security in their lives. But it’s also important, guys, that when she is upset about something, and we are failing to meet our other obligations to her or the kids, that we don’t constantly sing that tired old song, “I bring home the money, don’t I? I work hard and provide for you and the kids, don’t I?” Guys, yes most of us will do this and we’ll take great pleasure in it, but we can’t hide behind that as a way of deflecting our responsibilities in other areas of the relationship. We wouldn’t like it if a woman said, “Hey, I go to Pistons games with you, don’t I? You can’t expect me to have sex with you too!”
So on that note, we’ll wrap up for today. We have given you two ways husbands can submit to their wives, and two ways wives can submit to their husbands. Next week Christy will cover the other three needs for men and I will cover the other three needs for women.
