This Is What Inadequacy Feels Like to Your Man

We can create empathy and intimacy with our man, by remembering this feeling – and building him up instead.

Ladies, I think the key for us is to think of what we felt when we had a major, public, embarrassing failure moment where we wanted to crawl into a hole and die – and realize that that is what our husband feels when we snippily correct his parenting, order him around, or tease him in front of his friends about breaking the kitchen plumbing when he tried to fix the sink.

What a great incentive that is for me to be much more aware of how I am coming across!

And what a great incentive it is to look for ways to build him up when I suspect he’s feeling this way.

Just as I was incredibly grateful for the leader who stopped me after my talk, and said, “I really appreciated your talk; I learned three big things I had never seen before,” your husband will be very grateful for your care in reassuring him.  (“Honey, I’m sorry I’m in turbo mode trying to get out the door. I don’t mean to order you around. However you want to dress the kids is fine. Thanks for doing that.”) Because, remember, he’s not a failure as a father. Or a husband. Or a dishwasher-loader. He may do things differently from you, but he’s a smart man who has a reason for doing things the way he does them.

I will confess, that even after all these years of researching the inner feelings of men, I had never really understood why inadequacy was so painful to them. Not anymore!

As the next step of this ‘aha moment,’ I’m going to explore why this feeling often leads to men simply shutting down.  Stay tuned!

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Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.

Visit www.shaunti.com for more.