Thursday, March 27, 2014

The top five needs of men and women…

The better your marriage is maintained, the less the pull of illicit affairs are on your marriage so maintain my marriage.

I Corinthians 3:7 (TEV), "A man should fulfill his duty as a husband and a woman should fulfill her duty as a wife, and each should satisfy the other's needs." 

There's a great book I want to recommend to you, His Needs, Her Needs, written by Dr. Willard Harley, a psychiatrist from Minnesota who studied thousands of couples over the last 20 or so years.  Dr. Harley has identified through the study of those couples the top five needs of most men and the top five needs of most women. 
           
The top five needs of most men:
1  Sexual fulfillment.  No surprise.
2  Recreational companionship.
3  An attractive spouse.
4  Domestic support
5  Admiration

The top five needs of most women:
1  Affection.  Affection means non sexual touching.  That means when you walk up to your wife and give her a hug, a pat on the back, a little kiss, squeeze her real close, and it stops right there.  You're not taking her by the hand and leading her up the stairs.  You're just expressing caring and affection.
2  Conversation.
3  Honesty and openness.
4  Financial support.
5  Family commitment.

Did you see any parallels in those lists?  Did they meet at any point? It is no wonder that we have so much conflict in marriage. 

When a man gets married, typically he thinks, even though she looks like a woman, he's really marrying another man.  So he sets about with all his earnestness and zeal to try to meet the needs that he's sure his wife has and ends up often very frustrated and sometimes very angry.

A woman even though she knows he looks like a man, really thinks that underneath all that he's really a woman with the same needs she has and wants to talk just as much as she does.  She sets about with all her zealousness and all her skill to try to meet what she is sure is his needs, only to find herself frustrated and angry. 

Dr. Harley says that about the only way to get around that is that for each person in a marriage to decide that they're going to get serious about finding out what the other needs and meet those
Just a thought from the front porch…

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