Christian Love relationship :an interview with Shaunti Feldhahn, author of recent bestseller For Women Only

Hi there,

I haven't had the time to write on my CHRISTIAN ONLINE DATING,CHRISTIAN RELATIONSHIP, LOVE AND MARRIAGE blog, but i will come back soon, so i thought i would give you something interesting to read: an interview with Shaunti Feldhahn, author of recent bestseller For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men, on the subject love.

For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men

ZIA had the opportunity to sit down with Shaunti Feldhahn, author of recent bestseller For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men, to ask her about love.

ZIA: Let’s start with the big one. What is Love?

Shaunti: In my view, the ultimate definition of love is caring for someone enough that you will put their interests above your own, and be self-sacrificing even when it hurts. That may be because you have intensely affectionate feelings toward the other person, or simply because you are making a choice to do it even when you don’t feel it.

ZIA: Tell us about the journey from Harvard business school to relationship speaker and author?

Shaunti: I never could have predicted it, but my time at Harvard and what I did in the years after that were the perfect foundation for what I’m doing now. Actually, a lot of people think I got an MBA, but I should clarify that I just did most of my electives at Harvard Business School. My core classes and my degree were from Harvard’s Kennedy School; I got a Master’s in Public Policy with a concentration in Business. Essentially I was trained to be a business-type analyst, but in anything related to the public interest.

Shaunti: After I graduated, I took a job on Wall Street as an analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was quickly thrown into the deep end of the pool. I was one of a team of analysts in this particular area, and had only been there a few months when the other, more experienced analysts left unexpectedly. So my bosses basically said, “you’d better learn fast” and I had to sink or swim. I had to very quickly learn how to look under the surface, to dig beyond what a situation looks like and into what is actually going on underneath; I had to learn how to get the best data and ask the right questions and quantify the most important findings in a form that someone could understand quickly and easily… and all of those things are absolutely essential in what I’m doing now as a relationship author and speaker.

Shaunti: What I’m doing is digging into the things that we just don’t ‘get’ about those who are most important to us. I’m focusing on the surprises - for example, the truths about men that we as women simply misunderstand, and once we have the right understanding it changes everything. And uncovering that requires a lot of investigation and research and analysis - exactly like I did on Wall Street. But with much more personal impact!

ZIA: What kind of research did you do to come to your conclusions?

Shaunti: I do almost entirely primary research. In other words, if I’m writing a book about what we women tend not to get about men, I go only to the men themselves and start by doing focus groups, and hundreds of one-one interviews with every guy I can get my hands on. And then I take all of that and try to cull out the surprises; the things that we misunderstand, that haven’t already been covered in the other great resources that are already out there. And because my findings are surprises, I have to demonstrate whether this is actually true, so I hire a professional survey company to do a scientific national survey to test what I’m discovering—so I can know for sure where I can make these claims with confidence.

Shaunti: I wish I could say that I initially planned this approach, but I didn’t - I initially stumbled across this as an excellent process for digging into this stuff! It all started when I was just writing my last novel ("The Lights of Tenth Street") and trying to figure out what my main male character would be thinking in his various scenes. So I would talk to a few men that I knew and describe a particular scene and ask “what would you as a guy be thinking in this situation?” I found myself so surprised by what they were saying that I did more and more digging, and eventually realized this couldn’t stop with just creating a character in a novel. So I ended up talking to hundreds of men—the guys behind the counter at Starbucks or the security guard at Costco, or the poor guy trapped next to me on the airplane for two hours. And because of my background, I also happened to know how to take all that and pursue a survey and put it in a form that would be eye-opening, but also pretty quick and easy to absorb.

ZIA: How do men and women see love differently?

Shaunti: Well, that’s was one of my main surprises in what I found when I researched men. Over 1,500 men provided input for the book For Women Only, and I realized what I was hearing from most of them was a very different view on what made them feel loved.

ZIA: Okay, so unlock the mystery! What makes a man feel loved?

Shaunti: Believe it or not, a man can’t feel that his wife or girlfriend loves him, unless he feels that she respects him and trusts him first and foremost. In fact, on my survey for For Women Only, 3 out of every 4 men actually said that if they had to make a choice, they’d actually give up feeling that their wife or girlfriend loved them, if they could just feel that she respected them, and trusted them and believed in them - and all of those things were more important to the average guy than feeling that his wife loved him.

ZIA: What is the difference between loving a man and respecting him?

Shaunti: Choosing to show respect is actually a choice, just like choosing to show love is a choice. And the important thing for us as women to realize is that in marriage, both of those things need to be unconditional for each partner to have what they most need. We tend to think love is supposed to be unconditional but respect has to be earned - but if respect truly is what he most needs, if you only demonstrate respect when he deserves it, it would be as devastating to him as it would be to us if he only showed us love when we were loveable.

A man will feel respected not when we say “I love you” and do these loving things, but when we tell him “I’m proud of you” and make the hard choices to not criticize him, to not question his decisions all the time, to avoid teasing him in public, and to learn to see our words and actions through his eyes. For example, something as simple as trying to “help” our man with something, tells him we think he can’t do it on his own - even if that is not our thought at all! But if we have a disagreement and choose to defer to him, it tells him we think he had good judgment and trust that he will be able to work it out in a good way. And that is incredibly powerful to a man - that is their equivalent of walking in the door and seeing a dozen rozes in the kitchen!

ZIA: How is sex related to a successful relationship?

Shaunti: I realized in my research that we as women have a fundamental misunderstanding of what physical intimacy means to our husbands. We tend to think of it as primarily a physical need for him, and instead when I asked these hundreds of men why this was important to them, what I heard had nothing to do with the physical. What I heard was the huge emotional need that every man has, to feel that his wife desires him. And if a man feels that he is desirable, that his wife wants him, it gives that man a sense of confidence and a sense of well-being in every other area of his life. But if he doesn’t feel desired - if he feels like it’s a little too easy for her to say ‘no’ or she seems to be tired all the time, it gives a man a sense of depression and a lack of well-being in every other area of his life.

Essentially, as one man put it, “What happens the night before in the bedroom absolutely impacts how I feel about myself the next day at the office.” And we have to realize, its not that ‘he wants more sex’. We need to take that phrase out of our vocabulary! Instead, we need to replace that with, ‘he wants to feel desired by me.’ And so with our response to him sexually, we can give our man the confidence that he can go out and slay dragons - and the confidence that he can be the loving husband we most need.

ZIA: For those women our audience who are not married, what advice do you have for them to help them prepare for a successful marriage?

Shaunti: I strongly suggest that they learn the true facts in a few of these areas that so many of us carry around the wrong information, and practice it now. For example, in your friendships with men, or dating relationships, to practice catching those areas when you realize you weren’t intending to be disrespectful but that is exactly what he is hearing. If you can see those things now and practice developing the habits with men in relationships that aren’t as intense as marriage, you will be both an extremely attractive woman that men will want to date, and a woman who will be investing in a great marital relationship down the road.

ZIA: You have two similar books, For Women Only and For Young Women Only. How is your advice different for young women?

Shaunti: In For Young Women Only, we did the same type of nationally-representative survey, only this time of teen guys. And we were fascinated at just how often the teen guys were echoing what the older men said. There are a few areas that are relevant mostly to the teenage years - for example, that teen guys look really indestructible, but inside their hearts are really tender and because they see how teen girls treat each other, they are extremely cautious and will not let a girl into their hearts until she demonstrates that she is safe for that tender heart that they have.

ZIA: Your husband Jeff has is prominently mentioned in your book. Can you tell us one or two of your favorite stories about your marriage?

Shaunti: Uh… yeah. People always ask how this knowledge has impacted me. And I always have to confess that even though I wrote the book and did all this research, that I still fall into bad habits and old patterns of behaving, too!!! I have a few girlfriends who love me enough to see something that I’m saying or doing and they’ll pull me aside and say, “um, Shaunti, there’s this book you need to read....look at Chapter 2 on respect again!”

And of course, it works both ways. My husband and I researched and wrote For Men Only together, and when we started Jeff confessed that he didn’t know if a book to help men understand women would work. When I asked why on earth it wouldn’t, he hemmed and hawed, but eventually shared what is the secret belief of most men: that women can’t be understood, because they think we are random!!

So For Men Only was essentially just one giant research project to prove to Jeff - and thus all the men who would read the book - that we women can be understood, and that the average guy really can make his wife happy and that its not rocket science. It’s just a matter of learning a few things they simply didn’t know before… just like there are so many things we as women didn’t know before!

ZIA: How does your book “For Women Only” help women with their relationship with men?

Shaunti: I think the overwhelming thing that it does, is open our eyes to those areas that we are sabotaging our men and thus our relationship without even realizing it. We tend to secretly think that we women are the ones who have the relationship skills and that “he just has to learn to relate better.” But what I realized is that the way that men are wired to relate is totally legitimate! Obviously, just like with us, they may not always handle things the best way, but it is powerful when we realize that so many of the issues that drive us crazy are not because of them but because of how we are handling something.

For example, all of us have had the experience of watching a guy shut down or walk off in a bad mood, and wondering what on earth we did that made him so angry. Or we think he’s totally overreacting to something really minor and then we get irritated. But once we learn these few pieces of information about how most men are wired, it helps us suddenly realize, oh my goodness, now I understand exactly why he reacted that way. And it also helps us see that his needs are just as legitimate as ours are!

And as one radio host put it, the For Women Only findings are essentially “truth that was hidden in plain sight.” My hope is that these findings will help each of us as women see all the areas in which our men are so much more vulnerable than we ever realized, and how much power we have to either build them up or, unfortunately, to tear them down. Knowledge really is power, and once we have these simple little pieces of knowledge, it makes such a huge difference to helping our relationship be the strong, loving connection that we always wanted it to be.

ZIA: Thanks for spending time with us.

Shaunti: It’s a pleasure! Thanks for the chance to share!

Shaunti Feldhahn began her career as an analyst on Wall Street and today is a bestselling author, speaker, and nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist. She holds a master’s in public policy from Harvard University, and a bachelor’s in government and economics from The College of William & Mary. Shaunti and her husband Jeff live in the Atlanta area with their two young children.

For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men

I hope you enjoy this artical on my blog CHRISTIAN ONLINE DATING,CHRISTIAN RELATIONSHIP, LOVE AND MARRIAGE i have this audiobook and its a realy good help to understand the difference between men and women.

Beginning your Christian date for love towards a healthy marriage

Before you look for into Christian dating, or Christian online dating, you need to know what are the steps that you should do. Like i said before, the first thing is the need to get healed from your past. You also don't want to have a helpmate that has baggage as well, it will cause a lot of problems. So get to know the Lord and his love and if you are just new and just beginning your journey with the Lord it is not the time for finding a helpmate, it is time to get to know the Lord and His Word.

And then you should come in prayer before God to give Him your rights to choose if He wants you to get married, you don't want to step out of His blessing.

And then you should learn from you past mistakes of choosing the wrong person or doing wrong, and change your perspective about it. God's will is that you will desire a spouse that will love the Lord with all their heart and obey His Word. If you have experience in the past with an abusive relationship, this time you don't want to follow the same road, look for a Godly character, pay attention to how they talk about others and how they treat them. And then you will need to look to see if you have the same calling. You need to discern if you have the same character. Sit down and write a list of the characteristics you are looking for, for example if you are looking for a person that will encourage others or one that loves to help , not lazy, give respect to others and so on.

And now i advise you to do what i did, because i wanted to succeed in my Christan online date and my Christian married life. I investigated to learnt about relationships with the opposite sex and to know how my potential other half thinks, operates and what needs are needed. Also what ways i can talk to him so i will be understood, and how to get a long with the opposite sex, and know what moves him. There is so much to learn, and im still learning. And i know that i would not succeed in my Christian online date, Christian love relationship and my Christian married life were it not for the knowledge i am now sharing. Its all about the deferences between man and women, and the key for success is to understand this. To be able to communicate is essential.

All men and women want to have long and lasting love marriage life, and it is beautiful to see it coming to pass in the places where i experienced before failure but now success.

Now you will have to be very careful as i speak especially to the women, first don't be afraid to refuse someone if you don't feel safe, and do not give any personal information about were you live or your phone number etc ( maybe create a disposable email address to communicate at first). And when you go to meet someone, do it in the day time and in public places. Take a friend with you if you can, its better to do that for the first time and then you can get your friends discernment as well. And if your not interested then just politely say so. You are not obligated to anyone. If at first or second or third you don't succeed, don't be discouraged from your search for a healthy Christan marriage relationship.

From the book of John Gray:" Mars and Venus"

Understanding how Martians and Venusians Define their Sense of Self

Without a positive understanding of some of the ways in which Martians and Venusians are different, it is easy to misinterpret and incorrectly assess each other. We can easily slip into negative and judgmental thinking. Pretending that we are from different planets and understanding that we must become bi-lingual (understanding that we use the same words but that they have different meanings to each gender) makes it easier to observe, respect and accept our differences. This leads to healthier, more harmonious and satisfying relationships at home with your partner, children or in the workplace.

One of the noteworthy ways in which Mars types and Venus types are different is in the way we primarily define our sense of self.

A man, above all, experiences his identity through his ability to achieve results at work and in the world. It is what he can see, what he does; the end result. A man defines his sense of self through his actions. At home and in the workplace, they are always doing things to prove themselves and to develop their power and skills.

A man defines his sense of self through his actions.

Martians value power, competency, efficiency, action, achievement, and accomplishment. They enjoy fulfillment primarily from achieving results and doing an excellent job. Men tend to be more interested in objects and things. Historically, they were the providers and protectors of the women and the family. Today however, men are being called upon to be more than just a provider and protector, more than what millions of years of evolution have dictated. He is being asked to learn how to nurture and support emotions.

How does a woman define her sense of self? It is generally through the quality of her relationships, how connected she feels to others, and how interactions and environments make her feel. Women value communication, connectedness, and relationships. At home and in the workplace, while Venusians respect efficiency and achievement, values like support, trust, and communication are often more important. They are interested in the quality of relationships, personal expression, and mutual support. They experience fulfillment by sharing, collaborating, and cooperating in the process of achieving greater success. Venusians value beauty, love, commitment, art, and again, how things make her feel. In a romantic relationship, it is feeling special, loved and adored: now that’s quality! Historically, women were the nurturers, so from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that they would be more interested in and focused on relationship.

A woman defines her sense of self generally through the quality of her relationships.

Naturally we are all a balance of these qualities, and with women spending more time in the workforce, more and more, her success and achievements have become an essential source of her identity. Similarly, with men developing their nurturing side and sharing the duties of home and child rearing, their pride and esteem is invested in doing a good job there too. Even with a blending of the roles, evolution, hormones, and brain structure still play a major part in what is instinctive for us: the way we think and what we think about.

Mars and Venus on a Date
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

How i found my husband on a Christian online dating site.Part 2

So to remind you, i was telling you before that God had to help me to be healed from my past relationships, and that i was learning (or maybe its better to say, im still learning) from the books and audio books concerning the difference's between the male and female thought patterns, languages, expectations, behaviors etc. And now im experiencing what iv learnt, Im putting it into practice, and Praise the Lord its working. Also i mentioned how it doesn't work if i don't put it into practice, and it becomes a big mess.

Coming back to the subject of How i found my husband on a Christian online dating site. A few years ago while i was praying, i was sensing that the Lord is telling me to join a Christian online dating website, but it was a big challenge for me because of a few reasons, first i felt that it will not be excepted in the minds of my congregation, and also the website i was using was very far away from my country and so, my chance's were very slim. Also i have never done this sort of thing before and it was scary. But also, i was very enthusiastic about it and so i did it. I was full of expectations but things didn't happened so good, and i just got hurt, i had one man that seemed very interested in me, but he was a very long way from me. It seems that he loved me and was passionate to be with me, but to my great disappointment it didn't happen and their were other disappointments, i decided to stop and discontinue with the help of the Christian online dating service.

About a year ago i heard God telling me He is going to give me a present, and it is my time now to get married. It was a strong word from Him, and i felt that he was really pushing me hard in the spirit to go back onto a Christian online dating website, so i did. This time was an act of obedience, but i didn't have the faith and i was not enthusiastic. And so, i didn't think any more of my fairytale that my prince would leave his home country, family, job and so on.

But WOW Praise the Lord it happen BIG TIME, that handsome lovely man came to see my profile and i started to get from the Lord good affirmation about him. And so we started to chat and then email each other and the Lord told me it is him. And to my big surprise he was visiting my country at the time and was not so far away from me. Do you know what i did ? I went straight to see him, it was wonderful, the ways of the Lord are mysterious. From our first meeting we knew that we belonged to each other and don't get me wrong, i had to fight lots of fears that i had.

We spent 2 weekends seeing each other and before he left for his country we spent a week touring my country getting to know more about each other, And then he left saying he will came back after he finishs his responsibility at his job. I also visited him at his country and this year, 6 months ago we got married.

And so, im not an expert about relationships with the opposite sex, but as you can see i wanted Love. And i wanted it to be be the best and the most it could be, like in our dreams or in fairy tales. And so it is with my husband. But when i don't speak his language, i can destroy the dream. Its almost like an instruction manual to a sensitive operation. Also, what you put into it, that is what you will get from it. This is why i see this scripture come to life in my marriage Pro 14:1"The wise woman builds her house, But the foolish pulls it down with her hands."

How i found my husband on a Christian online dating site.Part 1

I was praying a lot of years to God about love and marriage for myself. And he said to me that he will give me my hearts desire. But first he led me to be healed from the trauma i had due to an abusive relationship i had before i came to know the Lord .

So one of my healing processes was reading a lot of books about Christian relationships with the opposite sex. As a matter of fact, i didn't have the Internet at that time or money ether, and so i listened to audio cassettes from friends about relationships with the opposite sex. I was so hungry to know about this topic, and so i would write what i heard to have it with me always.

And one of the important things i heard was to give God my rights to choose if i will get married or not. And so that was very scary and very hard, but i did it, and i was so happy that i heard God telling me that i will get married. But it took a lot of time from that moment (about 8 years ago) till now. But now i have been happily married for 6 month, praise the Lord. But i want to lead you to understand that if we want to find true love and get married within God's Will, we have to be healed and to be changed, and a very important key for a good and lasting marriage is learning that we are so different from each other, It is like we speak 2 language's, for example you will say something but it will sound the opposite for the other person, so it is very important to learn each others language. The truth be told, im just now beginning my own journey about love and marriage in practice. Now that i am experiencing what iv been tought to put into practice, i'v realized by not doing what i have learnt, it doesn't work and it becomes a fight, and i hate to fight. And then im in big trouble , because mostly men don't understand women and they are not the experts on relationships (which i will talk about in this blog later). And if there is already a fight, it could well be that the heart of your man will be closed, and he will not see anything. But he will probably just fight with you and in his mind he will think " I have to defend myself and protect myself". He feels that you are accusing him, this is what he see's, even if it is not the truth. And in this case it is so difficult to get your point across without it seeming like you are attacking him. It is like a rolling stone ( I will explain more about this later in this blog) And if his heart is closed it is very difficult to make peace, And then we are lost. It say's in the Bible in Pro 14:1"The wise woman builds her house, But the foolish pulls it down with her hands."

Also, i didn't know that men really want to get married and to love and honer their wifes. Because of my past experience's in life, i came to believe that all men were bad boys who only wanted your body, and didn't want intimacy and true love... .

I want to come back to the topic of how i found my husband on an online Christan dating site.

But i have to go now but i will be back :)

so stay tune there is more to come

Press here to continue to part 2

Christian-Date-4-Marriage blog

Hello friends!!!

I would like to talk about Christian online dating in this blog , and several issues on real love and healing. Also, i want to encourage people who are hesitant concerning Christian online dating. To know its ok for a Christian to do so regardless of the typical steriotype placed upon Christian online dating. Of course you have to be careful, but with wisdom, God's Word and prayer to the Lord it can lead to a real and beautiful marriage.

I would like to talk about how to succeed with love from the beginning of the relationship and in the marriage, also about the key for success in the relationship, the "differances" between men and women.

This is my first ever blog and i am now at this medium.

I am out of time now but i will be back to continue a lot more

To continue press here