Simply Feminine � Surprising Insights from Men, Wonderly, Morgan [best ereader manga txt] 📗

Men Need to Feel Needed

Men tell me they have an intense desire to feel needed. Hearing this came as a surprise to me. They further expressed that as soon as a woman withholds her need of him, the soulmate part of the relationship is over. If he doesn’t feel needed, he no longer sees the point of the relationship. If a woman is perfectly capable on her own and flaunts an “I-don’t-need-you” attitude, men are not attracted to her. If a man doesn’t feel useful to a woman, he’ll seek another who isn’t reluctant to ask for help or express her vulnerability. On the other hand, when men feel needed, they care deeply for us and want to protect us.

Imagine a men’s empowerment movement that invented a hypnotic process to make men lose interest in women. Imagine that the men start bragging to each other about how they feel wonderful being independent and free of needing women. How would we feel about that? This scenario is similar to what men have been experiencing for decades, as women have sought to use their own resources to get their needs met, while saying they don’t need men anymore.

We have to ask ourselves, why would a man want to be in a relationship with a woman who doesn’t need him? In the trellis and the vine allegory, the trellis felt needed when he had a lovely, delicate vine to support. He thrived when he felt useful in contributing to her safety and growth because it gave him a purpose.

Men love to fulfill our needs as long as we come from an attitude of appreciation. When we are receptive to his gifts and respond with appreciation, he feels good and wants to give to us again and again. But, if he offers help to a woman and she responds, “No, thank you, I can handle it myself,” she is refusing his gift. Done often enough, this type of rejections deflates and discourages a man to the point of ruining a relationship.

A man wants a woman who can share her vulnerabilities and needs with him so that he can offer her something to make her life better. Yes—admitting our needs to the men in our lives can take courage; it requires letting go of our pride of independence and admitting our limitations. But the courage to admit we have needs builds a man’s trust in us. And in turn a man who feels needed opens up more emotionally. In short, we have to ask ourselves whether we’d rather be proud—or happy.

Here is an email I got from a man who wrote about feeling needed:

“We are warriors at heart; those impulses are still in our DNA. As men, our woman, my woman, is important to me. I want to protect her, I want to cherish her, and I want to do things for her that she can’t do for herself, and hopefully there are some of those things left. Women are capable of so much, and on top of that give birth, and men know this. Being trusted to bring something valuable and unique into the relationship that makes the lives of all concerned better is a deep need in men. We need our woman to know this and have some things that she trusts us to carry the burden for.”

– Paul, Engineer, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Men Need to Feel Trusted

Every man wishes to feel trusted by the woman he loves. Trust is a critical part of admiration. If we don’t trust a man, we can’t admire him, and thus we cannot give him the one feeling he needs most: feeling admired. The more we trust our man, the more he’ll feel admired and the deeper he will bond to us.

Of course, we need to trust men to be faithful to us, otherwise we wouldn’t be with them, but that isn’t the only way we can show our trust. We also need to trust our men in day-to-day activities, such as trusting their driving or navigation skills. Men don’t like being told how to do something because for them that’s belittling; it reminds them of their mothers. They want their partners to be their lovers, not their mothers. So, let him do the task, give him credit for doing it, and don’t micromanage or mastermind the whole expedition yourself.

It’s particularly degrading when the man is doing something we can’t do or don’t want to do—unclogging the sink drain or changing the garbage disposal—yet we still tell him how to do it! Men don’t want us to stand over them to make sure they’re doing it the way we would. They want admiration, not supervision. So, if he’s doing the dishes, why not let him load the dishwasher the way he thinks best, even when it’s not the way you would.

Another aspect of trusting is believing what a man tells us. If a man tells us we’re pretty, we should believe him. If he tells us we’re smart, we can believe him. He’s telling us his experience of us. He’s telling us his truth. We can diminish a man’s feeling of being trusted and admired by persistently questioning and doubting his sincerity. When a woman doesn’t accept as truth what a man says about her, it is the direct equivalent of telling him he isn’t trusted by her.

Robert said, “Trusting your man by letting him lead is like giving him a Valentine’s Day card because every time you trust him, you implicitly say ‘I admire you, I believe in you, and I am glad you are the man in my life.”

Another way to show our trust is by being vulnerable by talking from our hearts, admitting imperfections, and sharing confidences. Yes, being vulnerable opens us up to potential emotional injury, ridicule, criticism, or judgment. But a man who loves you won’t do that. When we take risks like this, it shows we trust a man. Men who love us consider it a great honor when