Video Transcript: His Needs vs Her Needs Part 2

I'm  proud to be with him.

His needs, her needs is our topic today, and Bill and Joyce will be with us all this week. So take time make sure you let your friends know about this series of programs. View us on the internet, share it with one another. Let this be a marriage builder, and that's the name of the ministry marriage builders, you know, let's construct, let's create the foundation that will sustain the structure that's beautiful and gorgeous and will last generations. And so today, we're just going to begin to identify, because we're very different from one another, his needs and her needs. So where do we go from here?

Well, we can talk about his needs first. One of the points that I usually make is that I'm not going to tell anybody what their most important emotional needs are. They tell me. And so what I do is I give couples a list of choices. Now they can add to the list if they want. They can have something that isn't even on the list, if they want to tell me, the question is, what could your spouse do for you that would make you the happiest? What could your spouse do for you that would be the most fulfilling? And so I give them choices, and what I discovered, especially for a man, it's important to give choices, because those two questions, he'll simply saym I don't know. Haven't thought about it. You know, I'm kind of happy the way I am, you know? But then the wife is saying, But wait, I want to love you, but you're not telling me how. I want specifics exactly. Okay, go ahead.

So the the choices. Let me tell you. Let me tell you what the choices are, first and and let me see if I can remember them right when I'm when I'm doing these shows. Sometimes I have trouble remembering my own category. Get ready. Okay, choices.

The choices are affection, sexual fulfillment, conversation, recreational companionship, honesty and openness, financial support, the attractive spouse, physical attractiveness, domestic support, family commitment and admiration. Did I miss any?

No, you got 'em all.

No, you got along? Yeah, good. And you got a chapter on each one of them? Yep, this is a book for me so serious I'm excited. So you look at you look at each of these, and you say, Okay, now out of that whole list, what could my spouse do that would make me the happiest when I talk to most men. Okay, now, so you're saying this list you present to both. Yes, okay, so these are the questions that we're not just asking men alone, but we're asking both men and women. There are, you know, the woman tends to go over to this certain group of things, okay, more than a man, but it doesn't mean that you can't cross over, and it doesn't mean that she doesn't have any interest in any of these needs. It's the top five. The question is, begin to prioritize. What's the greatest identify them, what's the most efficient way to deposit love units? What creates the most massive number of love units in the other guy's love bank and out of this list. What could Joyce do for me that would make me the happiest? And for most men, the answer is sexual fulfillment. That is what they usually start their list with. However, it's becoming also on the woman's list, one of the top. More  we're seeing this for women, but they but basically for most men, they will put that of all the 10 that are there, they'll put sexual fulfillment on the top. After sexual fulfillment, they usually put recreational companionship. In other words, they want her to join him in activities that he enjoys they like her to go fishing with him, hunting, a football game I did. I took Audie to her basketball game the other night. Does she enjoy it? She said she did, and I had a hard time believing her. I mean, she put on her orange t shirt. Know, go, sons, go, you know, that kind of a thing. And, and I really like being there, but that was the first time we've ever gone to a game together, you know, usually it's me and the boys, you know, that kind of a thing. And she said, No, I really want to do this. I really want to do it. So during the game, she wants to read the book. I'm like, Yes, you know, are you having a good time? You know? Is it okay? Are you enjoying, you know, Are you understanding and this and that? No, I really like it, you know, it's, we won't do it next weekend together. But that time was good, good.

Joy she had a positive experience. Yeah, it was good. She was depositing love units in your love bank, yeah, because you were associated her with this wonderful time that you were having, yeah, yeah. Joyce went to a football game with me this year. She was willing to go on the condition that we saw Minnesota play the Green Bay Packers and that Brett Farb was playing for the Vikings for the very first time. It was good. You got to see that game. I watched every minute, jersey on and everything. This was a monumental year, actually, because I had been to football games where in the parking lot, I have asked who won. It's not my bottom line favorite, but nevertheless, yeah, this was a good year.

Okay, so with men, sexual fulfillment is number one, recreational companionship and number number two, the third is physical attractiveness. In other words, the thing that deposits a lot of love units is for their wife to look attractive in their eyes. Yeah. I mean, we're not setting a criteria that you have to look like the front of glamor or something like that. It's what drew you to that woman in the first place. And keep it up. And do you still like the look? I ask Bill all the time, what do you think of this outfit? Do you like this? Do you don't now I don't do it if I don't also like it? Yes, you follow what I'm saying. So it's a mutual decision. But I want his input. I want to be physically attractive to Bill, yeah, broader now in the 80s, you know, big hair, you know, and really tight jeans. She asked me, What was the first thing that attracted me? It was the smile. Okay, honestly, it was her smile. Honestly, yes, it was because I was so intrigued, I didn't know. How did you get inside of those tight jeans so uncomfortable? So now here we are, 26 years later, still there. Smile, still there. But I do not like the tight jeans. What about big hair?

It doesn't matter. Is not a priority in my life, I can tell, but I love her smile, yes. And the other one for me is scent. I like her smell. You have those kinds of things, see, you know, you know I noticed, and I'm sure she's not going to choose a scent, though, that she, too, does not like. And that's the part we have to understand here, that is, we want your input. We want to deposit the love units. We want you happy, but we're going to be happy too, right? I recognize, I'm beginning to notice the needs, or, you know, desires, that you have, but there's going to be mutual, right, you see? And that's a relationship, mutual sharing of life with one another. Okay, good. Next. The fourth is admiration men. Men like to be admired by their wife. And I've often said that in marriage, your spouse should be the president of your fan club. And all too often, women are very critical of their husbands. Instead of being the president fan club, they are the husband's worst critic, you know, constantly telling him what he needs to do to improve. And this is the opposite of what he needs emotionally. What he needs is is is affirmation to be told that he's doing a good job and that there are things about him that she admires and that she respects, and so many women have told me, you know, when it comes to that emotional need, yeah, but what if I don't admire, what if I don't respect him? What if I think he's got all kinds of problems that need to be overcome? I said, Well, the important thing is to express your admiration of the things that you value more than the things you would like to correct because his need for admiration is so important that your only hope to improve him is to make sure he knows you're on his side, and that you are his support, and that you are his fan, and that you want, you want the very best for him. You're not his enemy, you're not his critic. You're the person who loves him.  When you come home, you know, he's drained, but he also knows that I'm not going to come home and be drained even more. I'm going to get a little bit of encouragement, right, right? And just a little bit goes a long way. 

Yeah, well,and a lot is even better. 

But, youknow, there are marriages that are in crisis and they're like, you know, you have no idea what he has done and how he has ruined and how he, you know, all of these types of, there's something, there's something. And what you want to do is this: what you want to do is speak to the king in that man, rather than the idiot. And our sitcoms, what do they do? They always speak to the idiot in the man. And we call it funny. No, it's heartbreaking. It will destroy a relationship in a marriage quicker than anything. There is royalty in kingship, you know, in that man,; find it and begin to speak to that and watch. He'll elevate, he'll begin to rise to it, right? It's a very, very important point that spouses should never ridicule each other, and they should never make jokes about each other. And it's one of the categories that I use, that I call love busters, disrespectful judging, and we'll get to that. Yeah, right. Okay, so stay with us. No, really, we're going to get this is a very important week. You know for you, you're going to get more help than you could ever imagine. This is a marriage seminar designed for you. It is. 

Okay, now the fifth is, is a tricky one. The fifth is is very hard to define and very hard to implement in the society we're living in right now, changing, and that is what I call domestic support. Domestic support is where the wife would become the manager of household responsibilities and child care. Now in our society, where we're dealing with dual career families, that is almost impossible. What you have to do instead is to create a relationship where you divide responsibilities in what I call a fair division of labor. The question is, how does a man get this emotional need met when his wife is working full time and they have three kids? See? So in this particular category, which men do indicate would deposit a lot of love units that she would just take care of the kids and do the housework for me, that would deposit a lot of it. A lot of women are saying, I feel the same way. I want him to do that for me. And and there is an effort to try to balance this out. And it is, of all of the categories that I work with, the most difficult, most confusing for for couples. So in review, those are the five that come up. Those tend to be the top five, sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, physical attractiveness, admiration and domestic support. Now that doesn't mean that women don't have those five emotional needs, or in some cases, would put one of them in their list of five. But I'm saying on average, this is the list that you're going to find for men. And so if you focus on those lists, how many men you know easily identify their needs pretty quick. Do they Okay? Well, if you have the list in front of the list definitely helps. If you ask a man, just, you know, what is the most important? I think most men would probably identify sexual fulfillment without too much hesitation, but the rest of them are very confusing. And the other thing is that, you know, usually that one's number one on the list because they think if they get that, all the other things will go away. Okay, you know, that's, if I got that, and everything else really doesn't matter,, but that's not true. It's not true at all. And so to be able to begin to notice, you know that, because that's you know, I find with men, you know, if you can just really begin to notice, what is it that your heart is really crying for? Then we can begin to answer it because a lot of times we're answering questions, we're not asking. And so what is it in your marriage, in your relation, what is the heart cry and this? And that's why it's so important to begin to identify it and begin to put words, you know, that's what you've done for men. And it's like, you know, I have this troubling in me, but I don't know what it is, and what you've done, bill enjoys today is saying, Okay, here's some language that will help you to communicate with one bring an understanding so that you can understand. Just go, Oh, I get it. I'm. Getting it. Now, one of the things you want to notice is that there is nothing in the list about spiritual needs, and I was dealing mostly with Christian couples. I included in the couples that I that I counseled, ones who were missionaries, were pastors, were evangelists, and I was looking for spiritual needs as important to deposit love units, and as important as I think it is, I think it's very, very important for a husband and wife to have daily devotions with each other, to pray together to be on the same page when it comes to understanding God's will for their life. The truth is that in my counseling of Christian couples, many of the couples that actually were praying together every day were also contemplating divorce, which, to me, as a Christian, was impossible. How  could that possibly happen? So what I'm dealing with here is something that was carefully thought through for both Christian couples and non Christian couples that you know. The question is, what is it that triggers the feeling of passion in marriage? And while I am very much in favor of Christian couples being on the same page with the Lord, as it turns out, these things came up on the top of the list for Christian couples. And as I pointed out to people, I said, look it if, if Bible study deposits more love units for you. Put it on your list, right? Make it your emotional need. And there are some women that do that. When we get to talking about a woman's emotional needs, women will come up with that far more often than men. So, so if you have another emotional need that out of all this list would deposit more love units, go for it. Okay. Have have your spouse meet that emotional need for you.

Now, as people you know, and as they get the book and begin to journey through it, you know, and just even today, you know, majority of our viewership are ladies the man's gonna come home and she's gonna say, you wouldn't believe what I saw on its new day. You know, you've got, you know, in all these kinds of things, okay, how once we begin to, you know, create this list, what do I do with it? Then you talk to each other. In other words, you present the list, and you say, I've gone through the list that Dr Harley has presented, and I want you to know that these are my five top needs. Okay, now you tell me your five top needs, and let's do an exchange. I'm going to become a master at meeting your needs. I want you to become a master at meeting mine, an expert. And what we discovered, too, is that these were things we were doing for each other when we first fell in love, very often, recreational companionship. You went out and did had wonderful times together. You had conversation, you had affection. What was the other one? That physical attractiveness? I mean, but these were things that you were meaning of each other, admiration, Oh, absolutely. You're the sunburn and stars. Want to spend the rest of my life with you, you know, and to think back. I mean, you're doing it when you first got engaged, you were dating, engaged and first married. Why did it go by the wayside? Well, other things came in and you thought, hey, we're married. It's going to continue on, wrong? It's not just like you can work out and lose weight and get really physically in shape, but if you don't continue on, it's not going to keep going. You're not going to keep that body that you desired to have. And really, quite honestly, the same happens in marriage. And the faster we understand this, it doesn't just happen that the more we're going to be having fulfilled marriages, because people are going to be putting time into it and fulfilling each other by meeting the emotional needs.

To answer your question another way. The question is, how do you become an expert at meeting these emotional needs? that's important, and there are three components. There are three parts to it. One is that it has to be effective. It has to work. And so you have to be what you do for the other person, has to actually deposit love units. So if it's if it's physical attractiveness, what you do for yourself to make yourself more physically attractive has to actually be physically attractive to to your spouse. So your spouse has to say, you know, waste your efforts. This is really working for me. Recreational companionship is another good example. It has to, you know, are you, in fact, doing things that your husband really enjoys doing with you? The second is frequency. Are you doing it often enough to meet the important emotional need? Or  is it something that that your spouse is craving but he's not getting quite enough of it? So it has to be effective. It has to be frequent. And the third is it has to be mutual. In other words, what you do to make your spouse happy has  to work for you too. So Joyce could go with me to the football game because she really wanted to see Brett Farb. And that worked. See, I mean, it deposited love events for me, but it was a mutual experience. Yes. Now the question is, can you drag me? How do we get the frequency up? It's the problem. But the basic idea is that if you really want to learn to meet your spouse's emotional needs, it has to  be effective. It has to work. It has to be frequent, and it has to be mutual. Now it also has to become a habit. And in order to become a habit, you have to do it often enough so that eventually what you're doing for each other that deposits all these love units becomes natural, becomes essentially effortless. And see, that's what engineers like. Effortless working. It's working. It took some effort to build the bridge to get it there, but we get to go back and forth over that bridge without effort. Once again, the exercise thing. You know, it's a maintenance issue once you've developed the exercise program that you want and you find successful in getting the body you want.

You know, why do I create the list? Why do I share this with you for this reason and this reason alone, because I desire you. That's what it is, you. You prefer one another. I desire you. I chose you out of everyone else in this whole world. I want to do life with you. Okay? But the thing is, is that sometimes we just kind of grow apart or side by side. It's not that the love isn't there, okay, it's just that we've gotten a little too busy sometimes. So let's just begin to turn some things off. Begin to read some things all right, begin to notice one another again. And let's just begin to see rekindled once again within our marriages, within your marriage, that love, that romantic that enjoyment, that you really might enjoy, the marriage that you've always desired.