In Successful Long Term Marriages
I spoke to one of my wisest friends last week about marriage. She has studied marriage and lived it fully. What’s the best advice she has ever read or heard about marriage? Actually, it isn’t advice. It is an understanding of the most central need of most husbands and wives. She credits a Rabbi Radinsky for passing along this knowledge. Based on his long career and all of his experience witnessing marriages and their dynamics, he boils down marriage to two basic needs, one for the husband and one for the wife… He says,
“In marriage, men and women each only need one thing. Women need to feel secure. Men need to feel important.”
Pretty interesting, don’t you think? Now, there are all sorts of interpretations as to the meanings of “secure” and “important.”
Any suggestions on how to interpret secure and important? Do you agree with this assessment?
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Agree, if secure and important are defined as follows:
Secure: She needs to believe that he has her back no matter what the challenge, understands her and accepts her unconditionally. She needs to know that he is loyal, committed and stable.
Important: He needs to believe that who he is and what he does matters to her. He needs to know that she is in his corner and proud of him.
Aaron,
I could not have said it better myself…
Sarah
Aaron, that was beautifully put!
This is a close correlation to Dr. Emerson Eggerichs’ Love and Respect premise. (See http://loveandrespect.com) I’m not entirely sure what I think about it. I still haven’t decided if this is just a cultural anomaly or a deep truth.
I will say that the “secure” reason has been ascribed to many winter/spring relationships, for example. But on the flipside, attachment theory would say that both partners in a relationship need to feel secure.
Like I say, I’m still thinking about this one.
Actually, he is not that original…read the scriptures…”husbands love your wives, wives, honour your husbands” (if I was a real theology major (I’m actually an ethics major), I would be able to quote the reference); heard a talk about this once, entitled, “Love, Respect and the M1 Tank”…all tough on the outside, all micro-switches on the inside…,…it made sense at the time…love/security are the fundamental needs of the female…honour/respect are the fundamental needs of the male; she needs stability, he needs recognition; how many more different ways are there to say it. She needs to hear him say that she is the core of his life (to others); he needs to hear her say that he is the best there is (to others)….fixes a world of hurts.
I really like the way you’ve phrased that Aaron!
Speaking as a girl with plenty of her own security issues, I know the biggest part of my relationships is trust, the security in the person you’re with. And I have spoken to endless male friends about feeling not needed/required/wanted.
Kevin, sometimes we should all do less interpretation, more straight up reading of old wisdom, shouldn’t we?
Great post Sarah – wisdom that comes from a number of (sometimes) opposing sources has to be good, right?
And Greg, I reckon love and respect are 2 sides of the same coin… Aren’t they?
Smoph,
I agree with you wholeheartedly about taking the best of different sources to come up with what works for you.
Sarah
I do agree about the needs of “secure” and “important.” How a couple navigates this can be incredibly unique to their marriage, but the key is that they each have a deep and committed understanding of what the other needs — and they continually walk in that direction.
This is why strong marriage is difficult (yet very rewarding) — it requires of us the heart and ability to not only be self-sacrificing, but also to be confident in expressing what we need.
The couples that figure this out are the ones who develop such authentic friendship within their marriage — that’s the sweet spot — where companionship and grace-filled oneness flourish. Not easy getting there, but truly a reflection of what God wants for marriage.
I just put up a new post backlinking to here about this idea of “one thing.” http://www.surrenderedmarriage.org/2011/05/one-thing.html
There is also a poll there where I’m getting input from readers about their own “one thing.” Click on over let us know your answer.
Very interesting topic.
I agree with the Rabbi. My parents were married for 63 years when dad passed away. Dad always loved and protected my mom. She always encouraged and lifted him up. I often said if ever a marriage was made in heaven, they had one.
In today’s society it is hard to find someone that will make that kind of a commitment.
Reuben,
You really summarized your parents marriage beautifully….
Sarah
This statement makes it seems so easy. I agree with Aaron completely. I believe marriages could survive anything if husbands and wives truly followed this to their core.
Thanks for sharing!
I’d much rather feel important than secure. And yep, I’m a woman. And I hardly believe I’m the only one that feels this way.
I also very much dislike general statements like this. They might be true for a majority, but they never are true for everyone. I like a more relative approach to life
Dear Maaike,
I completely agree that this is a generalization. Like others, it does not apply to everyone. You are the first person who has said that they disagree with this on this post. However, there have been others who said they do know of some other exceptions to this rule. Thanks so much for commenting and pointing that out. It shows that all of us are different in our relationships.
Sincerely,
Sarah
As women, we do need to be secure, but our security cannot fully be in our husbands. While our husbands give a lot, they are only human and they cannot provide security on a 24-hour basis. Our security should rest in Jesus Christ. He’s stable, He’s always available, and He wants us to rest in Him.
As far as feeling important, as women, we should encourage our husbands and respect them, but ultimately they must get their worth must come from Christ as well.
Hi Sarah,
Your friend is right…but also very polite like many of the responses here. I won’t speak for women but my wife assures me that feeling of security in a lifelong relationship is connected to all things inside and outside the bedroom. As for us men, if I can be so bold, “importance” is simply the tip of the iceberg.
It’s Ulysse’s fault…and all the kings before him and all of the delicate debates about who will take our names (my wife finally broke down after we had our second child…well, mostly) and who will carry on our families into history. Listen closely ladies, we want to be immortal. I know some softer spoken gentlemen might write in and deny it but that is the one thing that drives us to be our father’s father’s and light cigars and do high fives and those dude chest pump things…and make women swoon and fall in love and walk down aisles and close your eyes and bite your lips and surrender (you know what I’m talking about) and one day if we are so blessed prove to the world that we can make ‘more’, just like us no less…AND have our sons tell tales about how their dad can do that thing better and how he jumped out of airplanes and built skyscrapers and how he is ‘the boss’ (all true BTW). Yes, all of it. Important is a scratch on the surface of the immortal eternity of a man Sarah…We want to be immortal. ‘Every father has a dream for his family’.
Don’t say I told you.
Taylor
Taylor,
That response may just merit it’s own post! Immortal, huh? Gotta figure out how to help our men feel that way. That’s an excellent piece of advice. Is that why the men I know are so much more concerned on a day to day basis with their mortality than the women I know? What do you think of that?
Sarah
Yes Sarah…there is more, so much more. I’m the father of the son of four generations with the same name. My grandmother’s brother was lost in the second great war – a pilot in the RCAF – before he had a wife and a son of his own. Luckily my grandfather returned from the North Seas and I knew from an early age much of my story to come was written by the names and fathers who came before and lent me my name.
It is interesting in a glass half full way that you ask why men are concerned about their mortality…yes on the surface, but no, that’s not it Sarah, that’s not it at all. While many women struggle with ‘growing old’ we are concerned with the eternity that comes after all that. Why immortality? Because we only want one thing…
Taylor
While I think both men & women want to feel secure and important, I definitely think men primarily want to feel important and women primarily want to feel secure. It’s funny,I have seen this same thing said by several different people in slightly different ways:
Pat Love and Steven Stosny describe the dynamic as:
* Fear and Shame- Fear is the opposite of feeling secure, shame is the opposite of feeling important.
Paul in the bible describes the dynamic as:
* Love and Respect- Women want to feel unconditionally loved-secure. Men want to feel respected,important.
I love it. Multiple sources coming to the same place always does my heart good.
Thanks for doing what you do!
Ted Lowe
Founder MarriedPeople.org
Ted,
Thanks for commenting and for adding so much to this. This saying struck home with me… your additional sources helped a lot.
Sarah
Here is the rest of the story Sarah:
…At first I though no, that’s not it, but when I looked back I saw you looking into the reflection of a half glass of water; mine, half full of immortality, you thinking the same is half empty with imminent mortality. I close my eyes and my mind is filled with memories…sitting on the bench seat of my father’s pickup looking up to him when he picked me up for a visit, the scent of years at sea and the heavy weight of so many lost in my grandfather’s Naval Journal and the one name on a blank page with a five digit phone number, “Shirley” (my grandmother who secretly told all of us we were each her favorite…and not to tell. RIP), the sound of the local radio station my wife left on in her little apartment every night she sent me home before I flew her away on a Valentine’s weekend and asked her to marry me, and more than the rest, the look in my son’s pale blue eyes, like I am looking into a mirror of the boy I was at his age when I began to understand one day he would share my name (and yes…I really did jump from planes and build sky scrapers), and all of the words and letters and days that strive to make this life more than just that. Why Sarah? Because more than anything we want…
more: http://wp.me/p1l5Wz-53
Happy Fathers Day everyone,
TJ