One of the better books I have read on marriage is His Needs, Her Needs by Willard F. Harley. Harley’s text deals with the major emotional needs that are typical of husbands and wives. He argues that one of the major causes of extramarital affairs is unmet needs in the relationship. Spouses cheat because they are looking to have their needs met. The books operates on the premise that meeting each other’s needs is a way of affair-proofing your marriage. Aside from affair-proofing, meeting the needs of your spouse is a good way of helping to ensure happiness in the marriage. Further, knowing the needs of your spouse is important for selflessly serving her or him.
The book addresses the five most common emotional needs found in husbands and wives. Interestingly, each of the major needs corresponds with a similar need in the spouse of the opposite gender. Often, these needs can make meeting the spouse’s corresponding need difficult if either partner is wholly focused on themselves. A degree of selflessness is vital in this discussion because it requires that we stop looking to what we desire and instead focus on meeting their needs.
This post will focus on the 5 most important needs for women, as described by Harley’s text. A future post will consider the most important needs for husbands. I am choosing to start with wives’ needs because I would argue that husbands have a special obligation to serve their wives, as a matter of divine directive.
Affection– Affection is the expression of care and attention. Acts of affection include hugs, touching (generally non-sexual), holding hands, giving flowers, going for walks, writing love notes, thoughtful gestures, etc. Women largely experience love through shows of affection. During the courting and early stages of the relationship, this need is usually well met. However, as time passes, men often shift out of courting mode and affection wanes.
- Conversation- From an early age women are more verbal. They learn to talk earlier and tend to be much more expressive. In relationships, women need communication. They feel connected when talking takes place because it involves sharing openly of themselves. It involves attentiveness, balance, and sharing. One of the challenges that takes place in marriage involves the tendency of men to talk less. They are typically less verbal and tend to see less value in conversation.
- Honesty and Openness- Wives tend to feel more secure in their relationship when their husband shares his thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs with them. The connection created by openness builds trust. Many women feel more fulfilled when their husbands are open with them.
- Financial Support- This need can be misunderstood. It is easy to misperceive this need as a wife wanting her husband to work while she fulfills the 1950s housewife role. The reality behind this need involves a sense that men ought to work and provide. At a minimum, they ought to contribute to the family’s financial security. Expectations in this area are often difficult to express and deal with because there is a sense that it is a shallow expectation or counter to romantic love. In the real world, a working/providing husband is important.
- Family Commitment- The need for family support is the need for commitment to family. Wives have an emotional need for their husbands to be committed to caring for and raising the family. Family commitment goes beyond just sticking around to help take care of the family, though that is certainly a part of the need. It also includes mentoring and loving the children. Wives need husbands to be committed to being fathers to their children.
These needs are not definitive of every wife in the world, largely because all people are different. However, these represent the typical needs wives have. For husbands, this list is best used as a guide for serving and caring for his wife. His major job in the marriage is showing Jesus to his wife through his actions and attitudes. Knowing the right areas to serve his wife is vital to doing this job right.
The last few days, which were supposed to be days off, wound up being impromptu work days for me. When I came home this evening, my 3 year old attacked me with pleas for attention and play time. It’s important to understand that as a dad and a follower of Jesus, I consider it my duty to love my daughter in a way that shows her who Jesus is. It’s a job I take very seriously. So, I spent some time playing, but I had to start making dinner. It was late and I was tired, so dinner was not going to be anything spectacular. I put a frozen pizza in the oven and made sandwiches and salads for my wife and I, all the while my daughter was danced around me in an effort to get my attention. Then, I had an idea. I put on the kettle to boil and made tea in her teapot, one I picked up specifically for tea parties with her. As soon as she saw it out and me filling it with water, she started squealing about having a tea party. I set the table with candles, put out teacups and saucers, put her in her fancy dress, and put on my suit. My wife quickly joined the act, putting on a dress. The result was a 
tea party with our little girl over a regular dinner of frozen pizza and salads. It’s not an elaborate daddy-daughter date night, but throughout dinner she repeatedly exclaimed how excited she was to have a tea party for dinner. It wasn’t my preferred daddy-daughter day together. However, given the brief time I had available to plan dinner, our impromptu candlelit tea party was a huge hit with one of the people who matters most to me. 
There is an important principal in this. Comfort, a sense of meaning, and purpose for difficulty in relation to hard circumstances in our past can be discovered by recognizing God’s refining us through the pain we experienced, reflecting on the good it produced in us, and reflecting on how our experiences have shaped us into the person that we are. Doing so requires that we learn to take a different point of view in relation to our past. This can be terribly difficult, because hardship often creates bitterness, which tends to blind us to anything positive that may come of unfortunate incidents. It can also be hard because it’s easy to confuse finding positive outcomes with being glad a bad thing happened. We don’t have to be happy that tragedy has been present in our lives in order to recognize how hardship has shaped us. We can be thankful for what we have become without having joy at what made us the way we are. Learning to shift our perspective in relation to past pain can bring great comfort and release. As difficult as it is, it becomes easier to shift our perspective the further displaced we are from the events. This is often the first step toward healing.
It’s easy to understand how alcohol or cocaine are addictive substances, but when it comes to pornography addiction understanding the issues involved can be more difficult for a variety of reasons. For starters, discovering a hidden pornography habit can result in significant feelings of betrayal for a wife and can make understanding the addiction component very difficult. In addition, pornography use carries some stigma, which clouds perspective and makes understanding the addiction more difficult. However, pornography addiction is a real illness, it’s diagnosable, and it’s treatable. Looking at pornography produces similar brain functions that take place with using cocaine. It is highly addictive for the same reasons as any other drug. This is not to excuse the betrayal of a spouse or anything of the sort. Rather, it is to say that an individual can develop an illness, which prevents them from quitting the behavior. Let there be no mistake, addicts cannot stop a behavior on their own. Denial, thinking errors, shame, and an out-of-control reward response system in their brains literally result in the addictive patterns becoming compulsive.
Several months ago, my wife and I ran in the Montana Spartan Race, a 5-mile obstacle course race. I ran in the race last year and initially signed up again to try to beat my time. My wife signed up as well and we both set out to prepare for event. About halfway through the training process, my wife asked me if I would run the race with her. My initial response was “no.” I had set out with a goal and was quite intent on achieving it. Running with my wife would not likely make my goal reachable. As time passed, I began to reflect on this decision in relation to my job as a husband. Ultimately, I realized that the decision came down to whether it was better to try to accomplish my own goals or to help my wife reach her goals.
There is a line in Ephesians that talks about the idea that husbands are the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. Many folks have read this as meaning that men have the right of dictatorship in their marriage. I would argue that to understand the passage in this way is to ignore the context. Scripturally, Jesus’ role in relation to the church is that He dies for it. Jesus demonstrates leadership by serving. He lives out the attitude He has toward the church when He washes his disciples feet at the last supper, literally doing the job reserved for the lowest servant in the household. Jesus instructs His followers to emulate His attitude. If this is the attitude of the head of the church and the Bible says that husbands are to emulate the head of the church in relation to their wives, then it follows that husbands ought to have an attitude of service and humility in relation to their spouse. This attitude of service is rooted in love. Further, it is an attitude that is aimed, not just toward serving, but toward preparing the church to be found holy and sinless before the Father. Jesus’ ultimate act of service is to offer his life as a sacrifice from the sins of the world. Certainly no husband can imitate that example, but husbands can live their lives to help their wives grow into the sort of clean spotless bride they were designed to be.
I would argue that this is not an easy task for husbands. Men are hard-wired to strive for accomplishments and to compete. Even further than this, our culture highly values accomplishment and success. These are not inherently bad things. They can be negative if the accomplishments and measures of success are misaligned. The Bible presents the idea that the greatest among Jesus’ followers are those who happily assume the position of the least and the servant of all. For husbands and fathers, this is the path assigned to them by the scriptures. We are to serve our families and sacrifice of ourselves for their benefit. We are to help our families grow personally and spiritually.
Words that create chaos can be easily identified because they breed conflict, anger, and infighting in the body of Christ. Words that create chaos and destruction are likely rooted in worldly wisdom.
ttitude create chaos and conflict or do we make peace and encourage unity in the body of Christ? The answers to these questions tell us where our wisdom comes from. Most folks are wise in their own eyes, but this is very different from being truly wise.
While watching my kids play at the park yesterday, my daughter came running to me from under play structure, crying and rubbing her forehead. She had bumped her head on the underside of of the fire engine jungle gym. A hug, a kiss on the forehead, and and a few comforting words later, she was running around again. The most natural response to my little girl’s feeling pain, is offering comfort and doing the best I can to make it better. This is a natural response for parents. Protecting our children is programmed into our DNA. The most natural thing in the world is to hurt when our kids hurt and to try to fix it. Unfortunately, as time goes on, this instinct can get in the way of healthy development into adulthood. There are times when parents need to reign in their instinct and allow their children to struggle or hurt sometimes because its whats best for them.
then the natural consequence is a poor grade. All too often, parents see their child panicked the day before, and bail them out. At times this involves doing the work for them or calling them in sick for school the next day. These situations are teachable opportunities. Parents must decide if they will teach their child that someone else will always be there to bail them out, or if they will learn the hard lesson: “If you don’t do the work, you will fail.” This is one example, but of a huge area of teaching. If you watch people long enough, you will witness parents who attack teachers because their kids aren’t getting A’s, or demanding their kid gets to play a starting position on the soccer team, or any other situation where a parent shields their child from the consequences of their actions or failures. I’m not saying that helping your kid deal with consequences isn’t okay sometimes. Rather, I am saying that protecting them from everything teaches them to be sheltered.
After 16 years of marriage, my wife and I have noticed that it has become easy to fall into a rut with the time we spend together. For example, since the kids came along we have had begun doing the “grocery store date”, which involved going out for dinner, then going grocery shopping. This date pattern came about for fairly obvious reasons. It’s easier to go to the grocery store without the kids. If we already have a babysitter, why not have an easy night of buying groceries? On the plus side, it meets the basic requirement of spending time alone together. The problem is that this outing isn’t particularly exciting and is really just doing home maintenance without the kids along. Dating your spouse should be about enjoying each other’s company and spending quality time together, unfortunately its easy for it to devolve into an obligation or routine.Because of this, we have put effort into coming up with new and novel activities to engage in on date nights that shift us out of our rut. Here are a few of our favorites:
reflect something that you think your spouse might find interesting, something that is a sort of project or activity work on together, or anything else that might spark conversation. Afterward we spend time talking about why we picked the book we picked and our reactions to the book we received. The important part of this game is spending time talking about it afterward and sharing reasons for picking the book. It can be adapted to other settings if you aren’t a reader. The game can be played in a mall or almost anywhere else.
Figuring out if your solution to a problem is miracle thinking is difficult, and usually requires an outside opinion to help assess the thought. Outside feedback should come from a person who will be forward and honest enough to explain whether or not a planned solution is realistic or likely to pan out. In addition, the individual ought to have a history of making healthy choices. This sort of evaluation is especially important if an individual is dealing with an issue that is particularly difficult or if you recognize a pattern of drastic solutions that simply don’t work out.
Patching Cracks 