Our Needs Are SO Different!
© Mike Woods
It sounds like one more formula book...you know, 'How to have a perfect marriage in 3 easy steps'. But it's not like that at all.
When I began reading it I was prepping for a new teaching series. What I found was great grist for the marital mill. It gave my wife and I lots to talk about.
For example, the five needs are Unconditional love and acceptance, sexual intimacy, companionship, encouragement and affirmation, and spiritual intimacy. Actually the way I just wrote those are the hierarchy of needs according to men. But for women the needs were unconditional love and acceptance, emotional intimacy and communication, spiritual intimacy, encouragement and affirmation, and companionship.
Awareness of these needs did a couple of great things for our marriage. First, it helped a task-oriented guy like me to get my focus on HER needs instead of just assuming hers were the same as mine. Secondly, it helped me understand that our needs really were quite different and yet equally valid.
It makes for lots of conversation as we think through the implications for our marriage. And whatever situation in which I find myself, I now know to stop and think how this might address her needs, not just my own.
I'm not the most giving guy on the planet. So this helps me know how to give. Yes, I need the help. Yes, it's also true that lots of this just doesn't come easily to me. I can use all the help I can get. And if it has to come out of a book...so be it. My marriage is better for it. Perhaps yours will be too.
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