Besides a man to look at her the way Mr. Darcy looks at Miss Elizabeth...
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach--a man--has the answer to the ultimate question in his column in today's WorldNetDaily.
Freud was not the only man who failed to understand women. There seems to be a unique male blindness wherein even husbands who have lived with their wives all their lives still cannot answer the question of what it is that their wives most want.
But surrounded as I am by a wife and five daughters, and having been raised by a single mother, and having spent thousands of hours counseling women in difficult marriages (not to mention being a male who humors himself that he is deeply in touch with his feminine side), I feel competent to answer this, the mother of all questions.
What a woman wants is to be chosen.
A woman wishes to be the center of her husband's universe, primary in his life and competing with none for his attention.
He is absolutely right.
Why would a woman leave the parents who love her unconditionally for a man whose love is so inconsistent? As Helen Rowland famously said, "Marriage is where a woman exchanges the attention of many men for the inattention of one." Why would any sane person agree to so rotten a deal?
Because a man can give a woman the one thing her parents cannot. Her parents can love her. But only he can choose her. He can make her feel special and unique. He can place her at the center of his universe, basking in her light like the earth brightened by the luminescence of the sun. A man is a dark planet, and a woman brightens and warms his cold world.
To be sure, men too desire to be special. But they make the mistake of establishing their uniqueness through vocation rather than relationships, through career rather than kin. And this is why so many men are so deeply insecure – because the locus of their self-esteem is the fluctuations of the marketplace rather than the constancy of the family. Women, however, with a deeper and wiser approach to life, have always understood that to be loved for what you are is always superior than to be loved for what you do.
And there you have it. Smart man, that Rabbi Shmuley. Men, take it to heart.
3 comments:
"What a woman wants is to be chosen."
That may be what a "good" woman wants, but I assure you that in this vulgar, graceless culture, most women want much more than that.
Chris,
To quote (from memory) Pride & Prejudice:
"Watch out, my dear. That savors of bitterness."
A woman (and no, I'm not talking about vulgar, graceless females) wants to be chosen, along with all that the word means. She doesn't want to be simply picked out from a group because she's the best eye candy, and then ignored.
She wants to know that he chose her for who she is from the inside out and to be treasured for herself.
I believe the females who want much more than that are the ones who lost hope early in life that being chosen and treasured is even possible for them. So they chase after all the other things in the (impossible) hope that those other things will satisfy.
The sweetest thing for me in my Christian faith is that Jesus knew me to my very soul--even better than I know myself--and He chose me to be His own. The chance of having a piece of that here on earth in the flesh is one of my dreams. And Rabbi Shmuley captured that dream in his column this week.
Skye,
Good to see you back again! I'm glad I didn't completely scare you away.
I haven't given up hope that I'm not asking too much. I see men like this all around me (they're mostly married, though). One of the elders at my church still calls his wife of 49 years, "my bride." So it's possible...
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