Video Transcript: His Needs vs Her Needs Part 4

Well, you're a delight. You make it easy.

Hey, this is my passion. You're speaking my language here. And because there's so many people out there that are that are being helped, I just love them so much, and I want them to enjoy life. And so the book that we're featuring is his needs, her needs, available from us. I encourage you again. Would you please get a copy. Joyce during the break, You said, Okay, Bill, you have to talk about this fun stuff happens during the break, right? Yeah. And I'm like, Yeah, but I think we hear this a lot, actually, when we go into the women's needs. And quite honestly, it could happen with the men's needs as well, but the man will listen to affection and conversation, and he says, but I'm not a conversationalist. It's just who I am and affection, you know, I wasn't raised in that environment. It doesn't come natural, exactly. And I have to be true to me. You don't want me to change. You married me this way, you know? And so the thought is that  we need to address that concern or that argument that maybe is out there.

It's almost a stonewalling. Yeah, exactly. And you know that the man does and is and so let's try to break that barrier, you know, so that the man can be free. But anybody would feel that if they have uncertainty or insecurity in an area. So what do I do when this isn't my bag? Okay? 

So the help us out, Doc

Most men understand the importance of developing a vocational skill, and they realize that you're not born with it. Whatever it is you're doing for a living, that people are paying you a salary for, is something you had to learn to do, that you weren't doing before you did it, before you were doing this as a career. And you also realize that the longer you're doing it, the better you get. That's why you earn more money at it. That's why people have been on the job for 20 years, make more money than somebody just started. So your skills improve. And my argument has always been that marital skills are as important as vocational skills, if not more. So a lot of men feel that a marital skill shouldn't be put on the same level as vocational skill, because marital skills are more are more intimate. They're more personal. If you think of your marriage as part of your job, you're going to lose some of the feeling of intimacy that you need, and all the rest of that. And my argument is not if the skills are really depositing love units, , if your wife becomes skilled in meeting your emotional needs, the fact that she's highly skilled isn't going to take anything away from the fact that you're going to be happy and that you're going to be happy with her, and that you're going to feel fulfilled. And so the basic idea is that if a man gets to be effective in his conversation, by that, I mean that she really enjoys talking to him, because he's learned to talk about things she enjoys talking about, that he becomes educated in topics that are that interest her, if he becomes skilled in addressing personal problems, something I had to learn to do, actually, as a psychologist. In order to become a professional psychologist, I had to learn to talk about emotions. I didn't have the vocabulary when I first started. I was all tongue tied. Well again, that helped me in my conversations with my wife. But even if I had been an engineer, I could have learned to communicate with her on an emotional level, if I had gone to the trouble of doing it. So the basic idea is that men can learn to be effective communicators with women. They can learn to be effective. They can learn to be effective in in affection, but they're going to have to practice it yeah. See, they have to practice Yeah. And and then even it becomes effortless. My conversation with Joyce now is effortless. I don't have plenty of put I don't have putting any energy into it at all. I try to grow my vocabulary, you know, that kind of thing. So I'm still learning, you know, that type of thing. But I really don't think, Okay, I better speak English. Here. It's effortless. I speak English exactly. But if you're learning another language, Spanish or French or something like that, it's a little bit of effort as you learn that language, and all of a sudden it's more natural. 

I find it interesting. I'm thinking about a client that you talked about where he said he was not in this mode of communicating. He wasn't a conversationalist. And yet, when Bill got him on the phone and he would talk about his areas of interest, cars, he wouldn't stop talking. Sure. So how does that work? Then, if the need is for the woman, does she have to learn also about his interest to make it a real conversation

To some extent. This is especially true with introverted men, men, men who, in the case Joyce is talking about here, the guy actually designed software for equipment that manufactures various kinds of equipment. Okay, so interesting. As an engineer, I find that fascinating, you know. How does he do that, you know,  and what kind of problems does he face, and so forth. One of my most favorite TV shows is how's it's made.

I love that TV show and the guys that write the programs for the robots that do all this to me. Well, his wife is not at all interested in any of that. So what I've been encouraging her to do is to develop some understanding of what he does, what he spends most of his thought working on, so that they can communicate. 

Let me add, why wouldn't the wife want to know about the husband's work? This is how money is brought into the house. That's how we're providing for our family. And you know, how would you introduce your husband to a group of people? I dare say a lot of women would have a hard time knowing how to introduce them. 

But at the same time, I have gotten a list of interest of topics that interest his wife, the way you're defending the man and you're defending the woman. I'm loving that that's great. We're cross pollinating here. This is good, but you've got to become educated in each other's topics of favorite conversation. So what do you enjoy talking about the most? Get educated in it, because the more educated you are in that topic, the more interest you find. I know, when I was in college, the courses that I took set me up for a lifetime of learning, because the education that I got got me interested that you started, it got me interested, and I took scientific I have subscribed to Scientific American from the from the year I was in a biology course because the professor wanted us all to subscribe to Scientific American. And I have done that ever since. And I have read Scientific American. I know now more about cellular biology than I could have possibly known at the time, because during all those years they've they've expanded their understanding of it all. So so by being educated in a particular area, you become interested in it. And so this is what I encourage husbands and wives to do for each and just because it's not important to you, if it's important to them, it must become important to you. 

Well, Said.

Okay, make what's important to them important to you, because then that shows that you do care.

So we need to quickly go through the rest of the women's emotional needs.

We did men yesterday in about 20 minutes. Yeah, much easier.

Okay, and again, we're not going to going to be able to expound on all of them. There's so much more in the book, and so we're hitting the highlights here. And I encourage you, please get a copy of this, it will make a difference. Okay, let's continue the next three that we're going to talk about. I'll just name them, and then we'll, with whatever time we have left, we'll talk about it. But the one is honesty and openness. Women crave honesty and openness. Joyce wants to know what I'm thinking. What are you thinking, Bill? Not much.

I better not ask you, right?

The thing is, is that women don't believe them, when they say it. But in reality, is it possible? Is it really possible. You're thinking about nothing about the question, that's exactly it. And then right away you scan the room I'm thinking about that, and you have to understand a man's brain and woman's brain are very different. Women's brains are connected to lots and lots of things. If you look at the corpus callosum in a woman's brain, it's thick. It means the fibers that are connecting both hemispheres are gigantic. They're all over, everywhere, many, many connections. Women, men have a much narrower corpus callosum. The fibers are much fewer. So for men, there's less things to think about. This is why men are not aware of their surroundings. Men are focused on a particular thing, and everything else is blanked out. Women can't blank things out. It's another reason why women are annoyed by men, much more than men are annoyed by women, because women are aware of the fact that he's scratching his nose, or he's or he's got his handkerchief sitting sticking out of his back pocket. Men ignore all of that in their environment. The it's the it's the difference between the two brains that accounts for a lot of the problems that men and women have with each other, because they do think differently. So women are curious. They want to know, what are you thinking, how are you feeling, and if you ever lie to your wife about anything, if you ever keep information from her, if you ever distort the truth in a minor way, it upsets her terribly. She does not want any misinformation of any kind. She wants absolute radical truth. This is one of the rules that I have for all marriages, policy of radical honesty. You must tell your spouse everything. You can't hold anything back.

If I ask, Do I look fat in this, I want an honest answer. Now you don't have to respond by saying, Oh, you look like Gordo. You know. No, you can say there are other outfits that are more becoming to you. But the fact is, yes, I crave, and I'm sure I represent the majority of women in this viewing audience, that honesty is extremely important where the trust is being built with that honesty.

The next is family commitment. Women want their husbands to become integrated parts of the family where the husband has a positive influence on the development of the child's moral values. We as Christians want our children to become Christians. And the influence of the Father in encouraging the children to come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is extremely important, extremely important to Christian women. For women who are not Christians, they still want their husbands to become involved in the moral development of their children, and so to the extent that he is an active participant in working with the children and helping the children grow and develop, and educating the children, that deposits a lot of love units into Her love bank. The final one is financial support. She wants him to earn a living. I have asked audiences, how many people half an hour before your wedding, if your spouse had said, I don't think I'll be earning a living. I thought you should know before we say, I do. I will not be earning a living. You're going to have to support me. How many of you would have gone ahead with a wedding anyway? The men raise their hands. The women don't.

Bill has had clients where the woman has earned more than the man, and she still wanted him to support the family financially. So it's not a case of them being penniless and needing that money. They're very capable of sustaining themselves financially, but there was a need for them to bring the bread home for the family. 

We have a crisis in American society right now where we have a 10% unemployment rate. What's interesting is that women are finding jobs and men aren't. The unemployment rate in America is with men, and it is having a catastrophic effect on marriages. It's catastrophic for a man to be out of work, it's not only hard on him emotionally, but it's very hard on the marriage. And to the extent that a man has trouble supporting his family, he's going to have trouble with his marriage. He's going to have trouble meeting her emotional need for financial support.

The emphasis you've placed on this, using the word catastrophic, is very, very true. And for men, they battle worthlessness. And if a man cannot financially support his family, it just feeds that within him, exactly. And for him, what does he do? He withdraws. He isolates all of a sudden the affection, or he finds three part time jobs. 

Communication is gone. You know, everything else begins to erode, you know, with this financial crisis, or he finds three part time jobs where he's not making much money at any of them, but he's never with his wife, never with his kids. All he's doing is working, and that doesn't work either.

So what are we going to do?

Well, when it comes to financial support, my argument has always been, and I've talked to couples about this at quite some length, is that realistic budgets are everything. Don't spend more money than you need to spend. The second thing is that a man might need to be retrained. He might need to be re-educated. He might need to get into a different career

Let me just stop right here. Because this is, this is important, because this is Bill, you know you're really speaking to men, because some you know what you're going to have to change possibly. And it's like, but wait, I've been doing this my entire life. I understand, but it might be challenging for a season, but the whole thing is, is that this will not define you. We're going to see you through financially, and we're going to see your marriage through, right? You know, so that, we don't want to lose everything in this just because it's a catastrophic crisis that we're going through. I'm not going to allow it to steal and rob from me. We're going to make it through. So I'm just saying, what Bill is saying here is of utmost importance.

And he can deposit just as many love units by upgrading his skills as he would in bringing home an income. In other words, if his wife knows that there's a there's an end in sight, there is a future, she'll fight for, she'll work full time. She'll end up supporting him. She'll work this thing out, but she wants to know that he takes this responsibility seriously. Yes, that's the point.

Yeah, we're out of time.