Excerpt

If there is one universal in any woman’s life, it’s this: she will always be relating to a man.

Fathers. Friends. Husbands. Boyfriends. Employees. Sons. Men make up approximately half the human race—and many of them are up close and personal. This man in your life. Or this man you want to be in your life.

Since men are everywhere, it’s easy to confuse the commonplace with the known and understood. But men are another species, really. Men care about different things. They are motivated by different drives. Their hormones shape their brains in ways alien to our own. Men aren’t women with big feet and beards. They are completely other.

All of this to say—men are fascinating creatures.

I admit that there are days when men seem more frustrating than fascinating. I’ve spent a big chunk of my life waiting for a man to respond like a woman would. But frustration is designed to give way to intrigue. Intrigue can serve us well. It leads to the questions that, I believe, are central to enjoying life with men. Who is this man? And how does he experience life differently than me?

Your discoveries in this search can provide what you need in order to relate to men well. Most importantly, those clues will be the basis of becoming a relational genius with the men who matter most to you—especially the man you love.

My own search for understanding has been helped by my work as a professional counselor. I listen for a living, so I’ve heard many men tell stories about themselves they don’t tell easily. Thirty-plus years of marriage to a quiet, thoughtful guy of German descent means I’ve had to learn to read a man who (like most men) is a bit of an enigma.

Letting yourself puzzle over the mystery of gender, of men and women created as they are, for a purpose, has its rewards. It leads to a God so awesome, it takes two distinct genders—male and female—to even begin to express what he’s like.

This larger picture is what you feel and intuit in many subtle forms. Think of the last time you sat with a steaming cup of coffee in a relaxed setting, talking with a group of friends. Women friends. (Chances are, much of that conversation was actually about the men in your lives.)

Have you ever noticed how the conversation changes the moment if, by some chance, a guy joins the group?

It’s not the same, is it? Something other has arrived on the scene. It’s more than the way he looks. It’s not merely that the topic of conversation may suddenly shift. This man brings a presence that just feels...well, different. Let me suggest that exploring what and why it’s different can unlock some of the richest secrets in relationships.

One can argue that men are simpler beings, and that may well be true. But the doors into their inner lives—their psyches—are not the same as yours and mine.

Understanding where a man is coming from takes some real detective work. The way I figure it, though, is this: we are better able to love what we understand. And loving and being loved is the main way we reflect the glory of God.

A Man’s Invisible Need

Understanding the man you love and loving the man you understand is greatly helped, oddly enough, by a sane estimation of yourself. As a woman, what you bring to a man is the antidote, the completion, the sheer pizzazz that, humanly speaking, he searches for all his life. Percy Sledge got it right a long time ago: when a man loves a woman, he’d trade the world for the good thing he’s found.

I bet there are days where you don’t feel quite that special. And yet, a man with any insight knows he’s missing something. We are usually the ones in the dark.

It’s crucial to realize the good and creative power God gives us women. As one guy on the verge of marriage said to the woman he loved, “You bring beauty to my life.” His fiancée was surprised to hear his comment; she’s not a woman known for her looks. He was right, though. A woman, by her very nature, ushers a man into a world that, to him, is marked by beauty.

Any reality check about your actual worth as a woman will take you back to creation. We are not the afterthought of God’s original work, like He stapled a few enhancements onto the original model for added value. John and Stasi Eldredge say well in their book, Captivating, “[Eve] is the crescendo, the final astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish, creation comes to a finish not with Adam, but with Eve. She is the Master’s finishing touch...Eve is created because things were not right without her. Something was not good.”

Indeed, some of the most famous words in the creation account are the one God speaks to Adam. “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). That reality echoes through the chambers of time until it shows up in hard, cold statistics. Men who live alone, sans the company of a woman, die earlier and have greater rates of depression and suicide.

Maybe that’s why the Eagles sang about the “desperado” who needed to come to his senses and come down from his fences—he needed to let someone love him before it was too late. Otherwise his prison would be “walking through this world alone.” And men just don’t do well alone.

Without the influence of a woman—without mothers and sisters and wives and daughters—a man lives like a “naked nomad,” a rootless, purposeless existence, wandering the earth in search of himself. God said it wasn’t good for a man to be alone, and so...he created a woman. Most men know in their gut that a woman’s presence completes something inside that remains loose, unfocused, and disconnected without her.

Without you.

Excerpted from What’s He Really Thinking © 2009 Paula Rinehart. Published in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson. Used with permission. All rights reserved.