A few things you didn't know about your spouse

I’ve been reading two books recently that I have found very interesting.

Basically, what they did is they conducted surveys with thousands of men and they put their findings in a book called “For women only” so wives can understand their husbands a bit better and they also did one called “For men only” which contains the results of the surveys conducted on women.

Being the nosy little parker I am, I read both.

Two things struck me hard from the book about men:

1) The first thing is that even if they’re happily married Christian men, they battle not to look at a pretty girl. They are created to want to look. It’s a struggle that was almost unanimous, from young to old, married to unmarried, Christian to non-Christian and even elders fessed up to fighting the battle against this particular sin. Looking at a woman with lust is a sin – the Bible says it is as bad as committing adultery with her. So for Christian men, this must be a constant ongoing struggle they face. I thought to myself “Not my Nick.” But the stats were so overwhelming that I asked him and to my surprise he said “Yes, I do want to look. I stop myself most times but I do notice when there is a healthy girl around.”... ‘healthy’ is obviously code for a hot bod. I held in my trauma and let him speak and I realised that even though I’ve got one of the most faithful guys around, even he has this battle. As a wife, this is very wounding and I immediately thought “Am I not good enough? What’s wrong with me? Why would he want to look at anyone else?” But the studies showed that this battle is not at all related to how much a man loves his wife. Even those who have the healthiest marriages with wives that look like bikini models still have to fight not to look at a woman with a nice body, so I let that comfort me.... :)

2) The other thing which I found interesting (and uncomfortable) was that almost every man surveyed found it extremely important that his wife look after herself. None of them can tell their wives this because it is such an incredibly touchy subject and would always cause heartache and a fight, but nearly every single one said they have a secret desire for their wives to make looking after herself and her body a priority – basically to try stay in shape and wear some make-up, etc.... Because men are so visual, if they see that their wives are making an effort in this area, they view this as an act of love and kindness towards them. And almost every man said he would throw money and time at helping his wife stay in shape. It’s obviously a biggie.

Not cool things to hear, hey? I know I’d love to stick my head in the sand and believe that Nick is immune to looking at pretty girls and that he will find me attractive no matter what I look like because he loves me, but it turns out, Chickens, that although our men won’t tell us these things, they are in fact almost unanimous! I remember reading a statement made by a renowned Christian author speaking to Christian wives and she said "Don't ask your husband if he's struggles not to look at other women, because he does. The question to ask is how can you help him in this area. Even Job who the Bible describes as ‘blameless’ had to make a covenant with his eyes not to look at a woman with lust other than his wife. I realise now that the reason he had to go as far as making a covenant is simple – Job was a man.

For the men reading this blog, the three unanimous things about women were these:

1) The first is that “I do” is never going to be enough for most women. A woman always wants to know “Do you still?” and she can and will behave very badly and very irrationally if she is feeling insecure about whether you love her or not. Most women at some stage have actually driven their men away to check “Will he come back?” It is her trying to answer the constant question she has gnawing away at her - “Do you still love me?” Even the most confident women doubt quite regularly if her husband really loves her. It’s an inbuilt insecurity that goes right back to Genesis and is the bane of our existence. Most women said that when men stomp out in an argument, the biggest concern they have is “Are we okay? Does he still love me?” The book says that if the husbands would just say “I want you to know that we’re okay and I still love you, I just need some space” it would relieve a lot of trauma.

2) This one shocked the guys – Almost 100% of women would choose a healthy relationship with their husband over financial security. This basically means that almost all women would prefer to be poor and happily married with a husband who adores her to being rich and unhappily married to a husband that she is not sure loves her. The well-being of the marriage is of utmost importance to women.

3) The reason women can’t let something go is because their minds are like a laptop with lots of open windows at the same time. A woman is incapable of closing a window until the issue has been resolved. If it has not been resolved, she can minimise it but it will pop open again at random until it is resolved. Men can set things aside and move on, but almost all women need the thing to be properly dealt with to close the window. I know this is an irritating one guys, but women are apparently made that way. That’s why when you get home, you get bombarded with things as you walk in the door... it’s all the open windows from the day :)

Anyway, I found these things interesting and helpful so I thought I’d quickly blog them. Try get the books if you can because this is a very rough summary... Basically I think we’re all more alike than we realise or than we’d care to admit. :)