Shaunti Feldhahn - For Men Only

Dear Lisa and Eric-

First off thank you for your ministry. It has been a source of support for me and helps me get my day started.

Your guest this morning provided some very useful and helpful comments and suggestions this morning, however I feel she makes a common and sometimes critical error in her approach to male/female relationships.(Please correct me if I missed something she might have said to counter what I am about to say.)

She said something to the effect that the "God wired us this way." This is incorrect. God did wire male and female differently but the things which she was discussing are the result of society tinkering with the "software" which runs the way God wired us.

Most recent studies actually indicate that men are MORE emotional than women. It is just that they have been trained to bury it. "Click on the X" as she described it. Women have been given the freedom to explore the feeling they have and have been given permission to keep "multiple windows open". Neither of these are the way God intended and why there it conflict between the sexes.

Men need to explore their feelings more and learn to deal with them. The reason they are not comfortable dealing with a woman's feelings is simply because it is outside their comfort zone and nobody (male or female) likes to be dealing with something they are uncomfortable.

Women on the other hand need to learn to let things go. There are some issues which will never be resolved and so you either decide they aren't that important or you move out of the situation if it is that important.

I see that your guest has written multiple books and so this morning was obviously a small portion of her views.

Just a cautionary note. With the focus being on what men need to do,and I just caught bits and pieces this morning, she propagated a perception which many women carry due to all the focus by many experts on what the man needs to do. That it is the man that needs to change or do work to improve the relationship.

I contend that God intended the male/female relationship to be 50/50. Yes, we men do have things we can do differently to improve our relationships with our wives but like wise there are things women can do also. By so much attention being given to what the man needs to do, it can cause a woman to try and change her husband. If this fails, the woman can become discontent with the marriage and seek to remedy the situation in other ways.

The only person who you can change is yourself. Other people, including your spouse, have to be left to them and God to make the changes. Under no circumstance should a person go into a relationship thinking they are going to be able to change the other person. Unfortunately, this attitude often develops in marriages where the partner, often the women, seek to change their spouse.

Thank you for your time and once again thank you for your ministry.

Respectfully yours in Christ.
Jon

Jon, she has also written For Women Only and that book shows the woman how to change. So ya it's not 50% 50% it's a man's 100% and a woman's 100%.  Also like you said before you only caught bits and pieces of the interview.  In the future I would be cautious about speaking before knowing the complete facts.  

Dear Lisa and Eric,
I am 20 and well I am not a mom but you were talking about discipline and saying "Yes Ma'am"
Well my mama always said

"A child does only what he/she is aloud to do."

And she wouldn't alow us to scream or whine when she turned of the tv or asked us to do laundry

"The only answer you give anyone when your told to do something is yes Ma'am yes Sir or if they're your age yes and address who you are speaking to."

Now about time-out, my mom did that to me once and never did it again because she sent me to the corner to "Think about what i had done" and as i sat there I started thinking "well what i did wasn't that bad" and that turned into me thinking what  terrible mother i had and that turned into anger against my mother and the longer I sat there the more I thought about how abused i was and I found myself hating my mother!

Oh yeah, really bad!

Well then I decided to outsmart my mom and I put on my "puppy face" and went to my mom and said "i'm done, sorry mom."

And my mom thought I was sorry so I got out of the corner and got to go play outside.

But after I calmed down I realized what had happened and I ran to my mom and I told her, and I told her how I didn't know why I thought those things and I trult believe that when children are placed alone on the stairs, or their room, or the corner or whereever you put your kids thinking about what they've done the devil sees his chance and whispers to them.

So after I told my mom she went straight to the bible and she found

Proverbs 22:15
"Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him."

And from then on she used a wooden spoon on us and she said that she saw a big difference!

So don't let your children push you around because it will just get worse and worse as they get older.

Obey the bible, get a wooden spoon or whatever you prefer and they will respect you and the devil wont get the chance.

Thanks MOM!

I disagree with Jon on one aspect. Women are constantly being told to change certain things about themselves. Their are thousands of books on the market telling women how to become better wives, daughters, mothers, girlfriends and people in general. Every single womens magazine tells them how to improve themselves in one way or the other. I think Jon needs to get out and look in the world to see all the things women must change for men. There is a book by a famous comedian called. "Act like a Lady, Think like a man". Every time I turn abound their is some article on MSN.com or Yahoo.com telling women how they must change to be a better person. I believe that most people never notice how they treat others or how things are hard for others. They only notice how people treat them and how someone is telling them to change. Jon needs to realize that she isn't telling men to change she is only showing them how women think and showing them ways to treat a woman they way she wants to be treated and not the way the world tells men they must treat a woman.
I do however kind of disagree with the second part of her discussion about men wanting to fix a womans problems. Women are well equiped to fix their own problems without having to have a man tell her how to fix something. In my opinion men at this time need to treat their wives as if they are intelligent enough to work through their own problems. By telling them that they understand how they feel and their feelings are valid in the situation then asking her what she thinks is the best way or how she plans to resolve the problem. If she asks for you opinion on how to remedy the situation then tell her what you think she should to, ie what you would do to fix that problem. I think the mister fix it mentality gives women the impression that men don't think women are intelligent enough to take care of themselves and fix their own problems. Women want their feeling validated but to be treated like she is intelligent. By telling her how to fix the problem first is like telling her "Don't worry your pretty little head about such things". Its condecending not loving.

The mother that called in about boys needing correction made me burn a little.  She was correct about the respect but trying to change her little boy into something else is wrong!

Lisa, if your little seven year old has not been majorly corrected until now, you have waited too long.  At the very least, mouthing off to his mother deserved a little butt warming.

Men are Dumb, and I Should Know: http://menaredumb.info

My former wife has read the book on Love and Respect and she is proud of that fact, however, she still abandoned me with no acts of kindness for 5 years, and not even seeing each other for 5 years! I cried out to God to let her let me go if she really didn't want this marriage and she finally did after keeping our marriage on hold and in limbo, janauary 2010! It's sad that she refused to work together to do what ever it took to keep this TWO person marriage covenant for worse or death do we part and make it work!  Thanks.

As a guy, the discussion didn't really answer the question.  All of our lines of communication are not open like the speaker's.

I am tired of hearing how women can multi task and men cannot.   I usually have more plates going than most of the ladies around me.

There isn't a show on tv or movie part, etc. that makes a guy look good as a dad, etc.

Its time for the Christian community to also stop bashing guys.  Sometimes its direct and other times its not so direct.   A recent artist on KLov talked about all that his mom did for him.   Dad wasn't mention.  He might as well not existed.  Good bad or neutral, dad was a least part of his life.

We need to build guys not tear them down!