I know women are dying to know this, because millions of magazine articles are written on this topic every year, in everything from Redbook to Glamour to Cosmo: What do men really want? Here is the ultimate list, written from the heart of one man to the heart of one woman. It's not a list of demands--it's an invitation to real intimacy, real respect, and real hope in the lives of people. Remember always the blog motto: the secret to finding the love you want is celebrating the love you have.
1. I need you
2. I need to be loved, comforted, and encouraged.
3. I need to be admired.
4. I need to feel strong and desirable. I need your devotion and support and tenderness. As much and as often as possible I need your kind voice and not your harsh one, and the feel of your hand flat against my chest, not pushing me away but rather you drawing near to me and into my arms.
5. I need to be trusted. I need to be free to move out into the world and express myself to people, to be a citizen of the world and a lobbyist for hope and possibility and the audacity of action. I need to work and create and build something, and as I do this I need you to know this drive within me is not one of disloyalty to you; it is out of tremendous LOYALTY to you, the desire to enrich your life and care for you. I need you to support my vision and purpose, my goals and my work, and be the voice of discernment and wisdom when I am discouraged or seeking direction.
6. This is a partnership, a life bond. I need you to be my refuge, my most trusted ally and friend, my sounding board, my help mate. I need you to fill in the abilities I don't have and the cracks I don't fill.
7. I need you to soothe my hurts, boost my confidence and restore my soul. Realize the tremendous power we have to heal and renew each other with something as simple as a gentle phrase or an embrace. We can be bread for one another's journey. We can be the beginning of hope in the lives around us.
8. (Intimate and personal)
9. (Intimate and personal)
---In our own private way we need to tell one another and remind one another and show one another how deeply we desire each other, how eager we are to please and entice one another, early, late, enthusiastically and often. The bond doesn't have to die. The energy of attraction between you and your One True Love can be stronger and more powerful with every ritual of sharing, every meal you take together, every dance you dance. You were born to be passionate and alive and hopeful in every aspect of your life, to hold one another and delight in each other and discover one another all over again. Our culture has it all backwards with its celebrity and youth obsessions: the 100 Most Beautiful People in the world are the 100 who choose each other and embrace one another with devotion and tenderness; the Sexiest Man Alive is the one who reads a bedtime story to your kids. Accept no substitutes: the love you want is right in front of you, a flame waiting to be ignited by the flame within you. Clean up, put on your best going out clothes and go dancing, laugh like hell together and drink a good glass of wine, and thank God you belong to each other. Why waste another day?
10. I need our partnership. I need us to be reunited in trust, hope, safety, constancy, tenderness, devotion, faith, hope, and love. I need our lives to be a gift to God and a light to other people.
11. I need to lather, rinse and repeat, especially 8&9, because you are my one and only and my deepest desire.
12. I need to be with my men friends occasionally, and occasionally to go off on my own. I don't do this to hurt you or to slight you. I do this because a man has to be restored and refreshed by the company of other men. And I need to go off by myself occasionally (even Christ did) because that spiritual practice, that act, allows me to restore my soul and examine where I am and where I need to be.
13. I need you to know and believe and rest in the fact that our love is unassailable and constant and no force of heaven or earth can move it destroy it or replace it. I am yours and you are mine and nothing on earth can change this. You are all I want in the world and what I desire at the beginning and the end of every day.
14. I need you to understand me.
15. I need you to forgive me and believe in me. As a man I can be clumsy, ignorant, preoccupied and maddeningly imperfect. There are times I have been selfish, stupid, stubborn, and ridiculously impatient. I am sorry for the ways I've failed you. I dearly want to please you and be a help to you. Sometimes, you have to ask me for what you need from me. There's a lot I don't know about women, and life, that only you can teach me.
16. I need you to need me and love me with all of your heart. I need your devotion and tenderness.
17. I need you to know I love you, now and always.
18. The exact number of needs does not matter. Whether your list is longer or shorter does not matter. The important thing is that our needs and desire to fill them are given to each other, and we give each day to do what we can, remembering to acknowledge one another's efforts and reach for one another in hope.
19. Men are simple, and our love languages are often cryptic. The old joke about sex and a sandwich is largely true. But all of us have to choose, and choose daily, between love and fear. If we choose cynicism and bitterness and disappointment, these will only increase over time and become a hard shell of unlovingness and hurt. But if we choose devotion, tenderness, acts of service and appreciation, these will be returned to us and increase. Remember that love doesn't divide; it only multiplies.
20. If you are with someone who is cruel or abusive or destructive, then this list does not apply. You need to find safety and begin again, begin by loving yourself. The hurt they have caused you is not your fault.
Ladies, it's your turn: what do women really want?
Monday, June 23, 2008
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This is the Way the Transformation Begins
"Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say "Why not?"
George Bernard Shaw, Robert F. Kennedy
This is the way the transformation begins.
It begins in me.
It begins now.
It begins with small incremental changes and shifts in attitude
it begins with positive action
failing forward
and suddenly I start looking at the world and my place in it in a new way. I speak differently and dress differently and project a different energy, and the world opens up like a glorious pink azalea bush, eight feet tall and blooming like mad.
photo by Kajo123 from the website flickr.com
Good morning!
An engineer builds a bridge and every bolt and weld has to be exactly right; every measure has to be perfect, or the bridge collapses or fails to take its place. Fantastically detailed blueprints have to be laid out. Impact statements have to be filed, sediment has to be studied, years of effort, months of planning, and a man-made marvel rises in the sky. Park somewhere and take a good look at a bridge, and think of all the skill and knowledge and hard honest work it took to create it. Consider how a few thousand years ago we were living in caves.
It is not so with a dream. Some people are remarkable dreamers and dreams spring whole from them, or they can leap up from bed and pages of creative genius flow out of their pen, intricate and perfect. Most of us though are baby dreamers, new at it and tentative to the trust the power of what we wish for.
Start the dream! Whether you want to go to nursing school or college or learn to play the guitar, take a first step, now, even in the wrong direction. Don't wait for the blueprint to come to you, the environmental impact statement, the permits and the 200-page budget and legislative dream approval. Rough it out, sketch it on a napkin, tell a friend, and take action. Your dream begins the moment you step out in first moment of believing, and the result can touch a thousand souls. Listen to Jim Valvano: never give up, never surrender. Believe in the audacity of action and your fantastic potential for change and new opportunity.
It is not so with a dream. Some people are remarkable dreamers and dreams spring whole from them, or they can leap up from bed and pages of creative genius flow out of their pen, intricate and perfect. Most of us though are baby dreamers, new at it and tentative to the trust the power of what we wish for.
Start the dream! Whether you want to go to nursing school or college or learn to play the guitar, take a first step, now, even in the wrong direction. Don't wait for the blueprint to come to you, the environmental impact statement, the permits and the 200-page budget and legislative dream approval. Rough it out, sketch it on a napkin, tell a friend, and take action. Your dream begins the moment you step out in first moment of believing, and the result can touch a thousand souls. Listen to Jim Valvano: never give up, never surrender. Believe in the audacity of action and your fantastic potential for change and new opportunity.
The Hawthorne Bridge at sunrise, Portland Oregon. Photo by Joe Collver, from flickr.com
Genuine happiness and success start with an attitude of abundance
Make it a daily practice to begin your day with five minutes of thankfulness. You can even do it in your car on the way to work. Do it in your own way, whether it's thoughtful reflection or a prayer or singing out loud, but focus on your rich, amazing, abundant life.
Feeling grumpy or resentful or worried instead of thankful? Change direction! Consider the incredible gifts you have--mind, body, spirit, senses, your family, your friends, your clothes, your car, and the breakfast you enjoyed this morning. By the standards of 99% of the world, Americans are incredibly, amazingly rich. You truly have no idea how richly blessed you are until you start thinking about it. Even the heart that beats within you and the lungs that breathe your air are an intricate and amazing miracle.
Some of my favorite movies are ones that feature a once-defeated character waking up to an absolutely new day: "It's A Wonderful Life," the various versions of Dicken's "Christmas Carol" and "Groundhog Day." How exhilarating it is for George Bailey to wake up and realize his life isn't over, it's just beginning, and that today truly is a brand new day.
"It's a Wonderful Life"
George returns home to everything he ever wanted.
2 comments:
What I want is a much shorter list than yours.
1. To be appreciated! My top by far.
Others in no particular order
To feel needed
To be adored
To have small every day things done for me or to benefit the family as a whole. For example to have my car filled with gas and have it washed once a week. Have the dishes done. My favorite is to have a meal planned and cooked for the family since I hate cooking. These are the types of things that are really romantic to me.
To be supported and encouraged in things I want to do like last year when I was taking piano lessons.
To be really listened to.
Gretchen--
I like your list,and it's encouraging to me that men and women at the core want many of the same things. You and Doug have built a wonderful life together. Maybe the two of you should start "Successful Marriage Seminars." Thanks again for reading the blog.
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