65 - Understanding a Woman's Heart: Part 2
Primary Need to Belong and Matter
A woman and a man each have the same need to belong and matter.
Each person is equally responsible for affirming the need to belong and matter of the other person.
Belonging and Mattering differ for a Woman and a Man
Their need to belong and matter is met in different ways.
A woman’s need to belong and matter is primarily met through security.
A man’s need to belong and matter is primarily met through appreciation.
A Woman Needs to Feel Secure in order to Appreciate a Man
While each person is equally responsible, the man’s initiation of security is crucial to create a healthy relationship. For the man to experience appreciation, the woman must first experience security.
Feeling Chosen Creates Security in a Woman
The woman’s primary security need is met through knowing, feeling, and having faith in experiencing herself as chosen. She is chosen above all other women.
She has confidence in knowing it, feeling it, and having faith in the future related to it.
To be chosen is to know that she has:
A Redeemer: a man who can relate to her, grasp her needs, desire the full expression of how God created her, and treat her with gentleness, availability, and vulnerability. Episode #64
A Protector: a man who can create a place of safety and stability that is based on her trust in his integrity, allowing her to focus on being able to love without fear or demand.
A Provider: a man who can provide for her the necessities that quell the fear of her essential needs not being attended to.
This order is very important:
It establishes a foundation of what a woman needs most.
It expresses a man’s trustworthiness, his capability of relational intimacy, and his integrity.
He is known as one who “says what he means and means what he says,” with an inner-focus on bringing his best to who he loves.
He has a sense of his own dignity and self-respect.
This description is not about perfection; it is about growth and focus for a man. He cannot be more than perfectly imperfect. He can, though, live inspired to be the man God created him to be, by remaining dependent on God, and by relying on “growth-aid” from other men.
The Cost of Dis-Order:
Most men want to focus primarily on being a Provider, and then they want to be appreciated and credited for it. Placing Provider ahead of Redeemer will turn the order of healthy belonging and mattering upside down, with unwanted relational consequences.
Tragically, most boys are not taught or raised to know this order so they could become the men we were created to become—men who grasp their need of other men, and men who know how to love well.
I was not taught these things. I thought that if I provided, then I would be appreciated. If I provided, then she would be secure.
I “fought” for appreciation that actually became a “bill,” which in turn became her “debt” to pay. I thought she would appreciate the security I provided, rather than be secure and appreciate me. I believed that provision would make her secure; then she would value me above all others. This form of relationship is all too common; tragically, it creates confusion, demand, conflict and sadness. The woman can never appreciate enough, and he can never grasp why she is not secure.
A Secure Woman
If a woman experiences herself as secure, she will express appreciation for the man. This appreciation is expressed in some of the following ways:
She will usually bring her whole heart, without fear, to the relationship.
She lives in the faith that she can openly depend upon the man’s love for her.
She can be in fellowship with him, as in plan life together and dream about the future together.
She can be concerned about his welfare, offering ideas and feedback in a vulnerable and open way.
She can reach out for him because of her trust in him.
A man who experiences a woman’s fellowship, concern, and dependence will also experience a consistent sense of being appreciated. He will know that he is valued and cared for; he will have an enhanced sense of worth (however, he does not receive his worth from her). He will experience himself as having been “touched,” as in his need to belong and matter to her is met by her.
As to touch related to physical intimacy, if a woman’s heart is experienced as chosen, generally speaking, her body follows.
This order and process creates a tolerance for the struggles of life and makes room for the celebrations of life because each person is:
free to feel their feelings
free to tell the truth about them
free to give both to the process of how life works (God owns the process).
If the order and process is not attended to, the couple is set up to miss pieces of the “dance” of their whole life together, with all of its ups and downs, struggles and joys, difficulties and successes. We are created to live in the “dance of life,” by attending to each other’s hearts. Episodes #17 - Episode #18
Relationship with God is Vital
We (men and women) need to develop a solid and persevering relationship with God to be able to develop the power of perseverance, so that the relationship can work to its fullest expressions of love. Episode #51 The Order of Life.
A capacity to trust Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-29 is critical for each person, and for each person to be able to care about the other:
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for you souls.
(Matthew 11:28-29, NIV)
Equal in Worth and Different in Formation
Women and men are image-bearers of God and created with equal worth.
However, a woman comes into life as a girl , and she is 100% certain that she is created to be chosen.
A man comes into life as a boy 0% certain that he has what “it takes” to be able to deal with the challenges of what he is created to do. A boy wonders about many of the following things, and he has to find out through experiences that validate his questions:
“Do I have what it takes?”
“Am I brave?”
“Am I made right?”
“Am I enough?”
“Do I matter?”
In the Hebrew culture of betrothal, the man would have to spend a period of time preparing a place in which they could begin their futures. Only when the father approved of the son’s preparation, was he allowed to marry her. In other words, he had to prove that he was capable of handling the responsibilities of caring for the woman’s security with his trustworthy character. He had to prove himself; he was not proving that he had worth. He was expressing that he had “what it took” to be trusted.
Men need men to validate them. Men need men to approve of them, in a sense, give them the incredible “nod” of validation that says:“
“You are made right.”
“You have what it takes.”
“You are respected.”
Men do that for men, and they validate their readiness to be called, “One-who-will-care- for-who-he-has-chosen.”
The father’s permission, given through respect that was earned, validated the man’s readiness to be a:
Redeemer
Protector
Provider
The woman did not validate the man. Men validated the man. Women can appreciate the man, but she cannot validate his manhood.
Men Who Miss the “Blessing”
Men who do not have this “blessing” often hide their need of other men’s validation, and consequentially, they expect a woman to do what men need to do for each other. The man’s insecurity often puts the woman in a position of “mothering” him with approval or puts her in the position of being a “mistress” to him, having to make him okay with sex. The woman doesn’t experience herself as chosen, and the man only experiences himself as validated in ways that don’t work long term.
A man needs other men in his life. A man needs God in his life. Then a man is prepared to “choose” a woman.
Women need other women to validate their worth, and their God-created desire to be chosen.
Women need God in their lives.
Women need to be chosen, and this leads to them becoming all God created them to become.
Men need to become “man enough” to be able to handle the responsibilities of choosing to do what it takes to become all they are created to become.
Good News
The good news is that any day is a good day to re-deem what has been lost.
Any day is a good day to restore what has not been taught or learned.
Forgiveness and mercy are powerful redeeming and restoring parts of life and love.
It is never too late to let mercy and forgiveness become the “stepping stones” to a better future.
Remember, as I do every day, that it takes a lifetime to learn how to live. No one does it perfectly, but through mercy and forgiveness, we can always start again.
God’s mercies are new every day:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center