What a woman really wants

Max Lucado is one of my favorite writers; I have more than six of his books (the locally-reprinted editions which cost less than a hundred pesos each, not the originals which cost more than three hundred pesos each). I don’t remember from what book but Lucado said, “A man can spend a lifetime with a woman and yet never gaze into her soul.” Wow! This is the kind of writing and insight that makes women swoon and me to go out and eat some pizza ...

Any man you talk to has, at various times in his life, thrown his hands up and shaken his head, wondering what the woman in his life really wants from him. As someone (Sigmund Freud? John Donne?) said, “Every woman is a science.” In the early 1970’s, I had a National Science Development Board scholarship in UP Diliman. I barely passed Math 17 and failed Physics 41, Math 53 and Engineering Science I. Hmm, this must be the reason I don’t understand women …

Dr. James Dobson in his book “What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women” (page 65) says on:

“Women yearn to be the special sweethearts of their men, being respected and appreciated and loved with tenderness. This is why a homemaker often thinks about her husband during the day and eagerly awaits his arrival home. It explains why their wedding anniversary is more important to her, and why he gets clobbered when he forgets. It explains why she is constantly ‘reaching’ for him when he is at home, trying to pull him out of the newspaper or television set; it explains why ‘Absence of Romantic Love in My Marriage’ ranked so high as a source of depression among women, whereas men would have rated it somewhere in the vicinity of last place.” (Living Books; copyright 1975 by Tyndale House Publishers Inc.)

John Eldredge, in his book “Wild At Heart, Discovering The Secret of a Man’s Soul” (page 182), says in a memorable, very poetic way what every woman wants:

“… the deep cry of a little girl’s heart is am I lovely? Every woman needs to know that she is exquisite and exotic and chosen. This is core to her identity, the way she bears the image of God. Will you pursue me? Do you delight in me? Will you fight for me?”

In the late 1990’s, I read through most of Dr. Larry Crabb’s books, namely, “Finding God”, “The Marriage Builder,” “Encouragement, The Key To Caring,” “Understanding People,” “Hope When You’re Hurting,” and “Men and Women, Enjoying the Difference.” Having come to know in recent years about nouthetic or Biblical counseling, I no longer agree with his “Christian psychology” viewpoints. Dr. Crabb, who visited the Philippines in 1994, is a great writer nevertheless. Posted below is an example of his excellent writing from the book “Men and Women, Enjoying the Difference”:

“A woman wants to know that the deepest parts of her being are richly enjoyed by a man who will therefore treat her with tenderness and look at her with delight, someone who will enjoy her because she is enjoyable, and not because of a manipulative desire that hopes to get from her what will bring pleasure to him.

“But women have learned to be skeptical. Every little girl has discovered that not everything wonderful about her will reliably be enjoyed. Some of who she is will at times be ignored, despised, demeaned or selfishly used. In a fallen world, she learns that offering all that she has to another runs the risk of rejection and abuse. And because she too is fallen and therefore committed to her own well-being with no thought of dependence upon God, she figures how to minimize the risks by hiding the tenderest parts of her soul and avoiding an honest look at her ugly parts.

“In order to survive in a world where people carelessly hurt her and use her for their own purposes, she learns to cover her delicate nature with a hard crust, a toughness that is always on alert for dangers. When she is by herself long enough to reflect on what she really wants, she becomes at least vaguely aware (sometimes acutely to the point of despair) of how nice it would be if someone were tough for her.

“Deep within her being, she longs for an advocate, not a tyrant who would control her life with strength, but an advocate whose strength on her behalf would free her to go off duty and to express more of who she really is. She longs for an advocate who would enjoy her and give her the hope that she could invite people into meaningful relationships with the confidence that there really was something about her that could be enjoyed.”