Dr. James Dobson continues an engaging conversation with marriage experts Shanti and Jeff Feldhahn in this enlightening episode of Family Talk. The discussion delves into the profound misunderstandings that often exist between men and women, particularly when it comes to emotions, intimacy, and security. With practical advice grounded in years of research, this episode uncovers truths that can transform your marriage and help you build a strong, loving partnership.
You’re listening to Family Talk, the radio broadcasting division of the James Dobson Family Institute. I am that James Dobson, and I’m so pleased that you’ve joined us today.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to Family Talk. I’m Roger Marsh. Do you ever feel like you’re speaking a completely different language than your spouse? For many of us husbands especially, understanding our wives’ deepest needs can make us feel like we’re trying to solve an impossible puzzle. I mean, we love our wives deeply, but sometimes it seems like nothing we do is quite right. Well, on today’s edition of Family Talk, we’re bringing you part two of Dr. James Dobson’s insightful conversation with bestselling authors Shanti and Jeff Feldhahn. Through extensive research and surveys with thousands of women, the Feldhahns have uncovered surprising truths about what wives really want their husbands to know about them and how they communicate. Now, on our last program, we explored how a woman’s need for reassurance runs much deeper than most men realize. On today’s broadcast, we’re going to explore why wives value emotional security over financial stability and what she really means when she says, just listen, and how men and women approach intimacy so differently. The Feldhans are both Harvard graduates, respected researchers, and sought-after speakers who have dedicated their careers to helping couples understand each other better. Their practical insights from their books, For Men Only and For Women Only, have transformed countless marriages. Now let’s join Dr. James Dobson right now as he continues this important discussion with Jeff and Shanti Feldhan right here on Family Talk.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, what’s number three?
SPEAKER 05 :
Number three is the one that Jeff and most men still have the hardest time believing is true.
SPEAKER 03 :
I actually struggle with it still to this day.
SPEAKER 05 :
Still, even though he’s seen all the surveys. But it goes against something that guys have had as an assumption for, I guess, pretty much your whole life.
SPEAKER 03 :
And it goes against some of the things the way that our natural wiring is. And it was the very first topic that we came up with, and it was the idea of security. And Shanti said, well, what do you think about that? And I said… Well, you know, I don’t think there’s anything novel there. I think every guy knows that a woman needs security. And she said, well, what do you think security means? I said, well, you know, that the mortgage gets paid, that there’s going to be food on the table, that the kids are going to be taken care of. So she said, financial, right? I said, what else is there?
SPEAKER 05 :
What else kind of security is there? And I said, well… You know, all that stuff is important, but it doesn’t hold a candle to how important it is that I know that you are always going to be there for me no matter what. And we’re always going to be close. And emotional security is so much more important to a woman.
SPEAKER 03 :
And by this time, guys’ eyes glaze over because you go, what does emotional security even mean?
SPEAKER 05 :
They don’t even know what those words mean together. And, you know, really, truly, the thing that we are telling the guys in this chapter and the thing we actually demonstrated on the survey, Believe it or not, guys, your wife, if she’s like most of the women across the country, 70% of married women, said that if they had to, they’d actually choose to endure financial insecurity if they had to, if that’s what it took to get more of you as a husband.
SPEAKER 02 :
That is a key point. I mean, that’s the rub.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Because the man assumes that his job is to lift the whole family by his bootstraps. Which is exhausting. Yeah, he’s out there. He’s working 12, 14 hours a day in some cases. And he is saying to his wife, baby, I’m doing it for you. I’m attempting to be successful so that we can live a good life. I’m doing all these things. And she said, not for me, you’re not. Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
And that is so hurtful to a guy.
SPEAKER 02 :
It is very hurtful because he’s been told all his life, this is what his assignment is. This is what he’s supposed to do.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s absolutely true. And for us guys, it’s actually quantifiable. I can look at my paycheck and I can look at the stuff. How much security I’m providing. I’m succeeding here, yet I don’t know how to necessarily quantify whether she’s happy or, you know, that other stuff is kind of soft. Right. So we tend to want to focus on the things that we can measure.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, this is not an easy one to solve because how is a man going to meet this need or this demand? He is not going to quit. He’s not going to not try as hard in his work. Right. And and yet she seems to be asking something of him that he can’t give because his engine drives him to success. How about it, Shanti? How are you going to deal with that?
SPEAKER 05 :
You know what? Honestly, I will acknowledge. And it is very true that sometimes there’s a lot of women who put their husbands in a difficult position because a lot of guys tell me, you know, I sort of feel like my wife. wants me to be at home all the time, and she wants the new house and car. And those two things don’t go together. But what we really have found, and truly, guys, I know the men out there listening find this so hard to believe, but truly, the vast majority of women really don’t want the new house, the car. the total financial security as much as they want the security of knowing that you two are each other’s best friend and you’re close and you will always be there for her. When you say, what do you do about it? One of the first things we tell the guys is be willing to ask your wife if the type of security that you’re providing is the type of security she most needs and realize that there’s some real encouragement out there coming for some men who, They don’t want to be gone so much. They don’t want to be working these terrible hours. They feel like they’re stuck, and they have to, and they don’t necessarily have to. They can take a more family-friendly job, and she’ll be fine with that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Or a job that they want to take, but it’s going to provide less of an income. And the women in the survey said, we’d want him to take the job that makes him happy.
SPEAKER 02 :
It comes down to a formula. Intimacy trumps success. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Financial success.
SPEAKER 02 :
Success, yeah. Can I borrow that in my next event? You bet. Because I’ve had guys say to their wives, you know, I’ve really got a good shot to be CEO of this company. And to his surprise, she says, I don’t want that. And everything within him is reaching for it. But I think a lot of men and women see that success in that sense very, very differently.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. One of the things that we were very encouraged by is to find that for most of the women, what trumped, a lot was they wanted their husband to be happy and they wanted him to be energized by his job. Like if he was taking some job to downsize because she was pestering him into it and it was not challenging and not fulfilling, you know, as one woman said, then I just have a depressed man on my hands and that sort of wouldn’t accomplish the purpose either. And so it is true that most wives know. But the thing that we keep telling the men who are reading this book is is that there are so many of you out there who really are sort of feeling trapped, and you don’t need to be. That your wife, she means it when she says she wants you home more, and she would downsize. You know, we were having dinner just a couple nights ago with some friends of ours out here, and the husband had been working at this terribly stressful job for years and tons of hours away from her and the kids, and she finally said, Honey… poverty is better than death. I would be much more happy with poverty than losing you to a heart attack from stress. And she said, and really, poverty is better than almost anything else that you could technically provide for us, but causes all this stress in your life. And so I really hope the guys out here hear that there are so many women out there who are so encouraging of them.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, this is one of those issues that really ought to come down to a compromise. Because the guy’s got to be happy in what he does. He’s got to be fulfilled. He has to feel like he’s making a contribution. He has to feel successful. Guys desperately need to be successful or feel that way. And so there ought to be a way to meet his wife’s value system and concern without sacrificing that. I believe it can be done.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and on the survey, actually, the numbers actually said that I think it was 80, like 85 percent of the women actually wanted him to take the job that he found most fulfilling. You know, it wasn’t that they didn’t want him to be happy. They did. They just didn’t want him to have that sense of I feel like I’m trapped into a rock in a hard place.
SPEAKER 03 :
And there really isn’t a rock and there isn’t a hard place on either side. She’ll work with you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Shadi, what else do women want men to know?
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, there’s so many things that are common understandings that guys have heard their whole life. And there’s another one that Jeff tells me he’d heard his whole life and didn’t know.
SPEAKER 03 :
And every guy out there has heard this one. She doesn’t want you to fix it. She just wants you to listen.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
I have no idea what that means. For the first 43 years of my life, I had no idea what that meant. And what I interpreted it to mean was that Shanti would talk and I wouldn’t interrupt. And I would just sit there. And when she finished at some point in the future, then I’d offer my solution and we’d move on. And that wasn’t it. Back to Monday Night Football.
SPEAKER 05 :
And, you know, what we discovered is it is not just me. It is most women out there that, you know, what it turned out to be is that when women say, I want you to listen, there’s actually a definition that women have of listening that is completely different than what most men thought it was. Like Jeff said, they thought it was not interrupting and then fix it. And if you are like most men, you guys, probably when you hear an emotional problem, if your wife or a friend or whatever is coming to you with an emotional problem… And the emotions are flying. And the emotions are intense. You’ve trained yourself your whole life that those emotions are clutter. And so we need to filter them out in order to focus in on the problem so we can find a solution. And what we’re telling the guys is all those things that you’re so busy trying to filter out… are the things that she most wants you to listen to at the beginning.
SPEAKER 03 :
At the beginning.
SPEAKER 05 :
At the beginning. And so what we’re telling guys is if you will just practice, and this is going to seem a little weird to guys at the first, but if you practice filtering out the problem and setting that aside and instead focusing in on all those feelings and say something like, man, I’m sorry, honey, that must have been really disappointing to you. There you go. She will feel heard. That’s what she means when she says, you’re not hearing me. You’re not hearing my feelings. Now she will feel heard and she will be able to say, OK, let’s sit down together and work on a solution. But she has to have the feeling that you’ve acknowledged her feelings.
SPEAKER 02 :
I had to learn this principle as a young psychologist the hard way. And I should have known this. Somebody should have told me. But I didn’t understand this about women. And there was a woman that I was dealing with who would get very, very frustrated with life, angry at her husband and very frustrated for a lot of reasons. And she would show up in my office without an appointment. And she was agitated. And all the staff, everybody knew her. And I would talk to her and she would come in. And I would listen, and then I would give her four or five things to do to deal with this that if she had done them, her life would have been a whole lot easier. And she would just get more agitated all the time. I didn’t help her at all. She would leave angry at me and everybody else. And then I began to realize that wasn’t what she was there for. And so I would invite her in and she would start telling me all the miserable things in her life. And I would say, that’s really tough. I’m sure that it’s overwhelming at times. Do you have any idea what you’re going to do about this? And I would just talk her through it, and she would appreciate me and leave with a smile on her face. It really is true. Guys who are out there, believe me, it really is true. And yet it’s very hard to—
SPEAKER 05 :
But the other thing we are telling the guys, though, is realize truly this new definition of listening, listening to the feelings first, really is the solution. I mean, you guys don’t have to take off your Mr. Fix-It hat. God has wired you that way. That’s great. That’s the way you should be. But just realize, apply that analyst sensibility to the right problem and figure out what the feelings are first first. And then you can deal with whatever the problem is.
SPEAKER 02 :
And it’s a lifelong process. But that’s the fun of it, you know, is learning to meet each other’s needs. And that’s really what you’re talking about.
SPEAKER 05 :
It is.
SPEAKER 02 :
And it’s not one sided. There’s the problem. Exactly. It’s been my observation that women are pretty good about complaining about these things and men hold them inside. And if you operate it on both sides, you can have an absolutely wonderful relationship.
SPEAKER 05 :
Although the thing that you have often said, and it’s been a total help for me as I’ve gone along how to do this research and how to talk to people about this, is there’s so many people who want, they know what they’re supposed to do, but it’s sort of like, well, I’ll do it if he does it. Or I’ll do it if she does it. And, you know, one of the things that you’ve often said is you can only change yourself. You can’t change that other person. So just start where you can start. And the thing we’re telling the guys is even if your wife is, You don’t feel like your wife respects you, even if you don’t feel like she understands you or she’s really complicated. Just try some of these simple, practical, little things and see what difference it makes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Just try it. Shanti, I’m going to look to you again to tell us the next thing that women need to tell their husbands.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, you know, we can’t do a book for men about understanding their wives without talking about sex, right?
SPEAKER 02 :
Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, you know, in order to explain to men how their wives think about this, we have to harken back to something about how men are wired. Because the difference here, what we’ve realized, that there’s a fundamental misunderstanding that guys have about what’s going on in their wife’s mind when they’re He approaches her and she says, oh, honey, not tonight. I’m just really tired. In For Women Only, I told the women that for men, they run everything in their sexual relationship through the grid of am I desirable or not desirable? Does she desire me or not? And so that’s like the only reason you think that you would ever be turned down by your wife. You sort of think that if I’m desirable enough –
SPEAKER 03 :
She wouldn’t say that tonight.
SPEAKER 05 :
And instead, what we found out from the women is that we actually asked the women on the survey, the women who said they wanted less sex than their husbands tended to, you know, tend to be the issue. What were the reasons? And we give this long list of reasons. And one of them was the one that most guys think is the issue, which is, you know, he’s just not attractive or desirable. for me enough and most guys think that’s the only reason but for the women it was only four percent only four percent of women said it was because he’s just not attractive or desirable and instead there were two main reasons that tended to come up over and over again and the first one is just that women have physiological differences in this area that most husbands just aren’t aware of it turns out as we were doing the clinical research for the book that there’s actually two completely different types of desire. Now, for you as a psychologist, this is probably no surprise. But for us as laypeople, this was enormously surprising. It turns out that there’s something called assertive desire, which is tied to testosterone and other sort of typically male hormones. And anyone with assertive desire has a desire to pursue sex, to initiate it, to think about it a lot. But there’s another type of desire, which is called receptive desire. And that tends to be tied to estrogen and other typically female hormones. And someone with receptive desire, which tends to be the woman, although 25% of cases apparently it’s flipped, but the person with receptive desire enjoys it just as much, is just as interested in it, just as available, but just doesn’t think about it all the time. And someone with receptive desire has to be approached differently. They need anticipation time. We always tell the guys, she just needs to know in advance what’s on your menu for the evening.
SPEAKER 02 :
You know, I think it’s also very, very much related to the romantic relationship. Sex for a woman divorced from a romantic content in the relationship is is offensive. And I wrote about that in What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women, where sex actually begins hours and hours before, maybe the day before, maybe the week before in the relationship. And a good sexual relationship is a product of all of those other things that occur. For a woman, sex that is requested or demanded in the absence of that romantic relationship makes her feel like a prostitute. She feels used.
SPEAKER 05 :
what you just said is the second major reason that we heard over and over again, if the first was the physiological differences, the second was this whole issue of guys tend to want to have that sexual intimacy in order to develop a sense of closeness, you know, with their wife, but wives need to feel close first. They need to feel close in order to want it. And I mean, and again, Jeff is constantly telling the guys it’s so simple. It’s such simple stuff.
SPEAKER 03 :
It is, and it’s many of the things that we’ve been talking about. It’s the emotional closeness. It is the taking your hand when you’re walking alongside looking in store windows. Sometimes, you know, you just hug her.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, what she’s thinking is, what’s the motive here? That’s exactly right. He’s doing this for a motive.
SPEAKER 05 :
But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense that we women would think that if that’s the only time it ever happens. You’ve trained us to think that. So just break that tie in her mind. Hug her just to hug her sometimes. Do those sweet, intimate things. And then not ask for sex later. And she’ll start thinking he is just being sweet.
SPEAKER 02 :
Let’s talk about desirability and beauty for a woman, how she sees that.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, this was actually a real eye-opener for me in that, you know, I have a six-year-old daughter, and no more than two days go by in any week without me telling her how beautiful she is inside and out. You know, I want her to be built up. I want her to know that, just to know it. And yet in the focus groups, one of the women said, well, do you tell that to your wife? And I viewed my wife, and I said, well, she’s confident. She’s competent. She can do all these things. Surely she doesn’t need to hear that as often. And these women said, we’re just little girls inside grown-up bodies, and we need to hear that every bit as much as your six-year-old daughter does. And I didn’t realize that. And I’ve just always assumed that she knows that. And so now… When Shanti asks me questions on how does this make me look, I run it through a different grid. And it’s not that she’s asking, do I look presentable to go out and go to dinner? She’s looking for the answer that, am I still beautiful?
SPEAKER 02 :
She’s looking for affirmation and acceptance. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 05 :
This is also the answer that so many guys ask us, you know, when we do Q&A at the end of our events and, you know, a guy says, what do I do? And she asked me, do these pants make me look fat? And every guy has probably been confronted with that situation. Deer caught in the headlights. What do you say? You know, and I said, you know, what you do is you realize that is not really the question she’s asking you. What she’s asking you is after 15, 20 years of marriage and two babies, do I still rock your world? Do you still find me beautiful? That’s what she’s asking. The example that Jeff used in the book is basically that you as the husband are the most important mirror in the house for your wife. She looks into you every day to say, do you find me beautiful? For most men, if they will see the power that it has to say, you know, honey, yeah, okay, you don’t look like you did 30 years ago. Maybe we can’t, either of us can’t fit into our honeymoon outfits, you know, but you I love you and you are beautiful to me inside and out. And yes, you still rock my world. That has this ability even in today’s modern culture where it’s not very politically correct to say this. That has the ability to just make a woman feel so special. And that’s the other thing that Jeff also tells the guys is you also realize there’s a flip side to how important it is that your wife finds you beautiful. is the absolute devastation you can cause your wife if she sees you transferring your attention to that hot babe walking down the street.
SPEAKER 02 :
Or humor. Humor is very, very painful.
SPEAKER 05 :
Humor can be very painful. Or looking at those pictures you shouldn’t be looking at on the Internet. You know, that problem that has become so prevalent, and we’ve talked about it before—
SPEAKER 02 :
We need to go to the last item, and there’s kind of a bottom line to all this. Share it with us. And it’s encouraging.
SPEAKER 03 :
At the end of the professional survey, we basically ended it with an open-ended question to the women. We said, what is the most important thing that you want to get across to your husband? What is it?
SPEAKER 05 :
And let me tell you, we thought that was a dangerous question to ask hundreds of women because we were kind of expecting a laundry list of things he was doing wrong. And instead, we were so blown away. The top answer by far wasn’t, I wish he would do this better or that better. It was, I wish I could get him to understand that he is my hero.
SPEAKER 03 :
The man I had hoped he would be when we married. And that came up over and over. Over and over.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s kind of neat, isn’t it? By far the top answer. It was just so powerful because we realized there’s, as we said earlier, there’s so many husbands who just feel kind of handicapped, you know. I don’t know how to please my wife. I don’t know how to make her happy. I don’t know if I can ever understand her. And am I doing a good job at this? And all these women are saying, you know what? Yeah, we both make mistakes, but honey, you are my hero. And maybe, and I tell Jeff this all the time, you know what? I, as a woman, I make mistakes all the time in how I respond to you, but it doesn’t Despite the fact that I may sometimes not say the right things or do the right things, I want him to know that he is the man I’d hoped he’d be when we got married. And that’s the way the vast majority of these women answered.
SPEAKER 01 :
You’ve been listening to Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk and Dr. Dobson’s conversation with Jeff and Shanti Feldhahn on this most important topic of what men need to know about women. Now, if you’d like to revisit the program you heard today, or if you’d like to go back and listen to part one of this conversation, go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. That’s also where you’ll find a link for the book that served as our topic of discussion today. It’s titled For Men Only. And there’s also a counterpart for women as well. It’s titled For Women Only. Both resources are available at drjamesdobson.org. You know, conversations like these are at the heart of what we do here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. In fact, every day we hear from couples who tell us that these broadcasts have helped their marriages. We believe that strong marriages build strong families, and strong families are the foundation of a strong nation. And your financial support makes it possible for us to continue bringing biblical truth and practical wisdom to marriages all across the country. You can make a secure donation through our newly updated website at drjamesdobson.org. That’s drjamesdobson.org. You can also give a gift over the phone when you call 877-732-6825. That’s 877-732-6825. Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and on behalf of Dr. James Dobson and all of us here at Family Talk, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
Dr. James Dobson continues an engaging conversation with marriage experts Shanti and Jeff Feldhahn in this enlightening episode of Family Talk. The discussion delves into the profound misunderstandings that often exist between men and women, particularly when it comes to emotions, intimacy, and security. With practical advice grounded in years of research, this episode uncovers truths that can transform your marriage and help you build a strong, loving partnership.
