![]() What has he done? What is he thinking or doing right now? What plans does he have? If she cannot trust the signals he sends. To feel secure, a wife must trust her husband to give her accurate information about his past, the present, and the future. ![]() This mental connection to her husband is crucial to her sense of well-being. In addition to affection, a wife needs conversation and honesty/openness from her husband. A tender note or an unexpected call “just because” are no less meaningful than a hug or a peck on the cheek. While men automatically assume that affection means touching, women think of affection in terms of its mental and emotional significance. According to Harley, she needs affection, conversation, and honesty/openness more than anything. It should come as no surprise then, that this mental connection remains foundational to a woman’s experience of intimacy. Generally speaking, a woman can tolerate a long-distance romance much better than a man, as long as she continues to experience a rich mental connection with her lover. Being in his presence merely serves this need, but letters and long discussions by phone will do just as well. In the beginning, when a woman is drawn to a man she finds interesting, she wants to know all about him, his character, his ideas, his interests, his goals. Women, on the other hand, build monogamy on a foundation of mental connection, which is no less primal or primary than a man’s need to experience his mate through the five senses. According to Willard Harley, author of the now-classic His Needs Her Needs, the top three relationship necessities for men are sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, and a pleasing appearance-all sensory in nature. This is not to suggest that men are fundamentally shallow they simply experience the deeper aspects of intimacy by means of their physical senses.īecause physical connection comes first, physical connection remains foundational to intimacy. Physical connection is both primal and primary, which explains why men commonly dismiss long-distance relationships as futile, like having no relationship at all. He wants to be near her, to share time and experiences with her, to see her face and hear her voice, even before touching her for the first time. Men need to be physically present with a woman in order to bond with her emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. By that, I don’t mean touching, necessarily. Men build monogamy upon a foundation of physical connection. ![]() However, men and women establish these connections in different order and give them different priority. ![]() Men and women in lasting relationships share four fundamental connections: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Along the way, I also discovered a profound truth that explains why wives consider a man’s viewing pornography nothing short of adultery. And the resulting conversation with my wife became the first step on a journey of discovery in which I learned just how differently men and women experience marital intimacy. Nevertheless, her visceral reaction gave me a fleeting glimpse into the mystery of womanhood. In fact, she quickly caught herself and recognized that I had simply empathized with the suffering of another person. While I maintained strict physical boundaries with my coworker-I didn’t so much as pat her hand-my emotional response to another woman’s anguish triggered a protective instinct within my mate.Ĭharissa is neither insecure nor suspicious by nature. As she wept, I empathized with her pain and shed a few tears of my own. The simple question, “How are you?” opened a floodgate of tears as she described feelings of betrayal and despair because of her husband’s behavior. The young woman’s performance had been slipping the past few weeks and the perpetual look of distress on her face suggested problems at home were to blame. My wife appeared wounded, even a little threatened, when I described my conversation with a female employee.
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