Women: Say ‘great job’ to your man

Tip 14: Women: Say ‘great job’ to your man

We women love to feel loved. We delight in knowing that our man adores and cherishes us. We feel special and secure when he hear, “I love you.” In fact, for many of us, feeling loved is the whole point of having the relationship to begin with!

So it is a huge surprise to find out that for men, that’s not the point at all. And knowing what is the point has the potential to change everything in your marriage.

Women, do you want to have a great relationship? Do you want your man to love being with you every day? Do you want him to feel cared for? It may sound crazy, but for a guy there is nothing more appealing, more powerful, more wonderful than feeling that you have noticed what he does in life – for you, for the family, at his job – and that you think it was good.

Men are so different from us. They don’t doubt whether we love them; they doubt whether they are any good at what they do for us. The cry of a man’s heart isn’t am I loveable? but do I measure up?? And more precisely: does she think I measure up?

This unseen but overwhelming difference means a man needs to hear, every day, what he has done that we appreciate. Which means we need to think about saying it, in a way that we don’t usually need to think about saying “I love you.”

Saying loving things just naturally pours out of us–but we often don’t think about saying “atta boy.” We think to ourselves how nice it was of him to fill up the car with gas… but it doesn’t occur to us to actually say “thank you so much for always making sure I won’t run out of gas.” We assume he knows that we appreciate it, and move on.

We see him load Johnny in the car for soccer practice after dinner… and late that night when we have a few minutes to talk, we share about the latest drama at the office instead of taking a few minutes to say, “You’re such a great dad to our son.” We don’t realize that such a seemingly-minor comment would have been the most amazing, fulfilling thing he would hear the whole day. Maybe the whole week.

We pull into the driveway, and notice, oh, he must have cut the lawn. But then we unload the groceries in the fridge instead of going in search of where he has collapsed in front of the television, giving his sweaty body a hug, and saying “the lawn looks so nice – you do such a great job taking care of our home.”

Or maybe we don’t even notice that he cut the lawn.

Or maybe we oh-so-helpfully say “Hey honey, thanks for cutting the lawn, but you missed that one corner again.”

Ouch.

We have no idea that he is longing for affirmation. So we have no idea that we have just said the opposite. We’ve just said the one thing most painful for a man to hear: “No you don’t measure up; in fact, you failed.”

It is so easy to think that shouldn’t bother him! but the only reason we’re saying that, is that it wouldn’t bother us. God has made guys so different. And once we women recognize that men have a deep emotional need to hear something completely different it can change the whole tone of our marriage.

Don’t believe me? Try it. No matter how he has disappointed you in some areas, try finding the good things to mention. Try saying “great job at that presentation”, and “I love that you held my hand at the suspense part of the movie,” and “thanks for working so hard to support our family.” Try saying those things every day. And I think that the response you get will be the best possible incentive to continue.

Join us tomorrow for the secret need of women that men need to know.

Drawn from Chapter 2 of For Women Only, by Shaunti Feldhahn.

Shaunti Feldhahn is the best-selling author of eye-opening, research-based books about men, women and relationships, including For Women Only, For Men Only, The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages and her newest, The Good News About Marriage (now through June 30, buy a copy of Good News from your favorite retailer, and receive an additional copy FREE from Multnomah Books – up to 100 copies!). A Harvard-trained social researcher and speaker, her findings are regularly featured in media as diverse as The Today Show, Focus on the Family, and the New York Times. Shaunti speaks regularly at churches, conferences, and corporate events. (Inquire about Shaunti speaking, or visit www.shaunti.com for more.)

Image credit: “Lauren & Poss-22” by John Hope Photography is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

This post originally ran as part of Marriage Month at Christian Post. From June 5 to July 4, join us here in the Christian Post Book Corner as I share my top findings on the little, eye-opening things that make a big difference in creating great marriages and relationships. Today’s post is one of a series on the surprising truths that men and women tend not to know about each other –and which change everything once we do.