Planned as a review, this series started with post 1671 and runs consecutively to this summary and an editorial addendum planned for tomorrow. The series describes the primal urges of both sexes and how natural motivational forces help or hinder marital compatibility. Other motivational factors have the greater impact on compatibility—for instance, personal beliefs, values, and emotional makeup. However, compatibility predominantly rests upon the natural makeup of the sexes balanced such that spouses are satisfied with each other.
The following summarized thoughts should be connected in background of every woman’s mind and be taught to young girls in bits and pieces as their maturity justifies it.
- Women seek to nest, nurture, and nestle with loved ones and work endlessly to brighten the future of everyone involved. Living well is their mission. They intuitively recognize that men can produce, accumulate, and protect wealth for the good life much easier than women can, and the promises of greater wealth leads to a brighter future for a man’s mate.
- Men don’t spend much time worrying about the future. They expect to handle whatever comes. They’re driven to overcome the obstructions of Nature, compete with other men, and shape human events. They strive to create and connect multiple events so that their activity promises a win each day. Their concerns about tomorrow shift to routine rest and preparation. That’s where a mate comes in.
- However, the more worrisome, promising, or rewarding a man’s job, the less attention he likely pays to his mate. It has little to do with her worth to him but depends on his dedication to fulfill the primary mission in his life. If he can’t produce, provide, protect, and problem solve for himself, then he has no business trying to do the same for others. His sense of significance arises out of accomplishments large, small, routine, and special plus his dreams for expanding, building on, and enhancing previous achievements.
- Both sexes are dreamers. A man dreams of WHAT he expects to produce someday. The road is unclear, but he lives each day by advancing toward his dreams. He shapes physical conditions and human events. Recognizing that he’s capable of handling whatever interferences arise, he handles obstructions as they come up. A woman dreams primarily of a brighter future for her and offspring. She anticipates with great diligence. To men, today is yesterday’s tomorrow. To women, today determines tomorrow.
- One prime motivational force pushes harder on each sex than all the others in their respective makeups. Men need self-admiration, and their accomplishments provide feedback to fulfill that need. Women need to feel self-important, and feedback from others helps fulfill that need.
- Women are the simpler sex in this case. They fear abandonment, first from father while growing up and from husband after mating up. Men are complex. They fear insignificance primarily that of being unable to accomplish what they intend. A man can’t live with a well-respected mate who even hints that he’s not respected for who he is and she’s not grateful for what he does. Pledged to earn her respect and gratefulness, if he fails to earn both, then he’s insignificant in her eyes. Whether he feels insignificant or not, he can’t or won’t live with someone that he senses harbors even the suspicion of it.
- A woman’s internal and primal sense of prettiness is the base of her importance, and her natural modesty protects it. Prettiness made more attractive attracts men. Her prettiness adds to marital compatibility to the degree that she confirms it regularly to herself in order to feel good and better about herself. A wife further promotes marital compatibility by enhancing husband’s routine and daily appearance to improve his influence in his competitive world with other men.
The eight primal urges cited at the start thus make up the underpinnings of marital compatibility. Without finding balance to the satisfaction of both spouses, rumble strips and threat of marital failure appear after romantic love fades in a year or two, if they don’t appear sooner for balance having never been achieved.
I close the series tomorrow with an editorial addendum.
Sir Guy,
You are a great summarizer.
Sir Guy, I have a question. I didnt know exactly where to place it but here goes.
I’ve heard women including some of my married girlfriends say the following, ‘My husband is my best friend’.
I’ve never heard any man (as yet) and that includes married male acquaintances/friends say ‘My wife is my best friend’.
I personally doubt that turning your husband into your best friend is necessarily good for marriage. I am not saying a couple shouldnt be close but considering the great differences in the natures of male and female I sometimes wonder if ‘friendship’ and the yardsticks that go with it should be applied to one’s spouse.
It struck me as well that the phrase ‘My spouse is my best friend’, is rarely used by men when they talk about their wives.
Why is that? What’s your take on the issue?
Your Highness Lin,
“Best friend” is a concept of much greater interest for females than males. Men don’t need a friend, so they are far choosier and slower if they ever do to call one their “best.’
As to marital best friends, men come to thinking of spouse that way only after many years of her proving herself valuable to him. “Best” means no one better, so it takes a lot and a while to earn it.
I think men also have a peculiar requirement for spouse to be best friend. If she can’t accept and value his true friend(s) as much as he does, she’s unqualified for eligibility in his friendship arena. I’m not sure that makes sense, but it revolves around these thoughts: He expects to be respected for the ability to select friends of merit to him. If wife admires his friend(s), clearly divorced from any romantic meaning of course, she qualifies for a different kind of loyalty than just marital loyalty.
Guy
Lin,
Sir Guy is right in saying that a man calling his wife his best friend comes “only after many years of her proving herself valuable to him.” That friendship may begin to develop in the early years, but then the pressures of the heavy-duty child-rearing season.– with husband working to provide financially, often wife, as well — make that friendship difficult to nurture. To be sure, rearing the children is a common goal. But it’s the myriad daily details that go into living out a life of loyalty and faithfulness to duty that strengthen the bonds of love and respect, which do indeed forge a deep friendship. In over 40 years of marriage,, my husband and I have experienced disappointments (his, with career — mine, with having to work an outside job when I loved home), tragedy (too personal to describe, but it involved death), family trauma (again, too personal to describe), and the ordinary bumps of marriage and family life. It was not in ourselves to create, but with God as central, that my husband and I have a best friend relationship. A powerful new book, which I would recommend that every married couple read together, is “No Ordinary Marriage” by Dr. Tim Savage.
Thanks, Sharon. Will check out the book.
I cannot wait to read the response to this!!