Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women
    What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women
    What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women
    Ebook22 pages3 hours

    What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women

    By James C. Dobson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Dr. Dobson's suggestions for marital happiness are interesting, practical, and humorous.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTyndale House Publishers
    Release dateDec 22, 2010
    ISBN9781414356136
    What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women
    Author

    James C. Dobson

    James Dobson is a pediatric psychologist whose organization, Focus on the Family, is the core of an influential multimedia group that advocates practices derived from evangelical Christian values. He is the author of several books and the host of an internationally broadcast radio show.

    Read more from James C. Dobson

    Related to What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Killing The Mood

      Feb 10, 2020

      Killing The Mood
      3 min read

    • Article

      How to Stay Married

      Jun 4, 2016

      How to Stay Married
      12 min read

    • Article

      Getting Started

      Nov 24, 2020

      Getting Started
      2 min read

    • Article

      Love Under Pressure

      Nov 20, 2020

      WHEN a newly married man looks happy, we know why. But when a man who’s been married for 10 years looks happy, we wonder why. This is just one of many, many jokes about marriage. Is it funny because it’s true? Because behind the joke lies the belief

      3 min read

    • Article

      Coupling Finances

      Dec 9, 2018

      Coupling Finances
      1 min read

    • Article

      ‘PLEASE Don’t Go!’

      Feb 17, 2020

      ‘PLEASE Don’t Go!’
      2 min read

    • Article

      Marriage Expectations

      Jul 2, 2021

      Marriage Expectations
      3 min read

    • Article

      Everlasting Love

      Jun 14, 2020

      Everlasting Love
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Return Of Empathy

      Nov 13, 2020

      WHEN RESULTS FIRST began to trickle in on Election Day, I’d already been reliving several days’ worth of PTSD from what I’d experienced in 2016. I was still a single parent then, with two young girls safely asleep in the 660-sq.-ft. apartment we had

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Return Of Empathy

      Nov 13, 2020

      WHEN RESULTS FIRST began to trickle in on Election Day, I’d already been reliving several days’ worth of PTSD from what I’d experienced in 2016. I was still a single parent then, with two young girls safely asleep in the 660-sq.-ft. apartment we had

      2 min read

    • Article

      When You Need The Money

      Oct 1, 2021

      When You Need The Money
      7 min read

    • Article

      After-effects

      Feb 9, 2021

      After-effects
      12 min read

    • Article

      When You Need The Money

      Oct 1, 2021

      When You Need The Money
      7 min read

    • Article

      Moms On The Warpath

      Oct 27, 2023

      Moms On The Warpath
      10 min read

    • Article

      Q&a With Richard Lui

      Mar 26, 2019

      Q&a With Richard Lui
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cool Dads: Tough Times Edition

      Jul 3, 2022

      Cool Dads: Tough Times Edition
      7 min read

    • Article

      Ariel Levy: “Feminism Never Said You Can Have It All”

      Mar 14, 2017

      Ariel Levy is a journalist, author, and staff writer at The New Yorker who has written long stories about South African Olympian Castor Semenya, gay-rights activist Edith Windsor, and what The Joy of Sex looks like for today’s reader. But if you know

      7 min read

    • Article

      Comfort

      Jan 28, 2023

      Comfort
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women

    3.5/5

    46 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      A very helpful and enlightening book. It helps men to appreciate the peculiarities of the opposite sex and understand how to relate with them better, especially in a marital relationship.
    • 4/5
      Dr. Dobson does a great job of discussing the differences between men and women. While I do not completely agree with everything stated in this book, I also understand that it is a book of generalities. Specifically, everything does not apply to my wife or even every woman I've ever known. However; the overall analysis of men and women is very insightful. When remembered that women are different and that there are certain things I can do to make communication, marriage, and intimacy better, this book has been very insightful.
    • 4/5
      Women are different from men. Can we at last agree on the obvious here? Unforunately, plenty of people will be angry at that statement, just as they will be angry at Dr. Dobson for trying to explain those differences. What they do not understand is that neither Dr. Dobson nor I think of women as less than men simply because they are different. And it doesn't say much about women when radical feminists are trying to "prove" women to be equal to men by trying to become men.Dr. Dobson comes to this topic with an understanding of the differences between the sexes and a desire to foster an understanding between them. He is not trying to put down either men or women, but trying to allow husbands to understand their wives better so their marriages can be stronger.It's a very good exploration of this. It is unashamed and probing, with no topic out-of-bounds.My only complaint is the same complaint I have with so many psychology books that claim to be Christian: it relies too heavily on worldly understanding and not on God. For example, it seeks to remedy low self-esteem by worldly means rather than a trusting in God, which is the only way such esteem needs can truly and finally be met.With that in mind, Dobson does go to God quite often in this, and I was well pleased with the result. I learned a great deal, and what I learned seems very true so far.If I discover otherwise, I'll let you know.
    • 5/5
      the best book I have read on marriage. I wish both husbands and wives would read it as it covers all aspects of family life,especially newlyweds. It is as relevant now as it was when it was written in 1974. What insight.
    • 1/5
      Out-dated, sexist and patronizing.

    Book preview

    What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women - James C. Dobson

    Women have needs which men

    do not understand. Here are workable

    solutions to the problems and frustrations

    today’s woman faces in her home and

    family life. She can break the shackles of

    emotional isolation, discover greater self-esteem

    and acceptance, and describe

    her real need for romantic love. This book

    shows the way to find satisfying

    solutions.

    WHAT

    WIVES

    WISH THEIR

    HUSBANDS

    KNEW ABOUT WOMEN

    4

    DR. JAMES

    DOBSON

    1

    Visit Tyndale’s exciting Web site at www.tyndale.com.

    TYNDALE is a registered trademark of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

    Living Books is a registered trademark of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

    What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew about Women

    Copyright © 1975 by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

    Copyright renewed 2003 by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

    Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible, copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

    Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

    Living Books edition

    Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-15029

    ISBN 978-0-8423-7889-5 (sc)

    ISBN 978-0-8423-7896-3 (Living Books edition)

    Printed in the United States of America

    16 15 14 13 12 11 10

    54 53 52 51 50 49 48

    To a little fellow named Ryan,

    who loves caterpillars and hates baths

    and tolerates girls

    and can ask a million questions an hour

     (Mom, do worms yawn?),

    I affectionately dedicate this book

    and pledge my very best efforts

    as his loving father.

    CONTENTS

    1. Mom: The Domestic Engineer

    2. Sources of Depression in Women

    3. Low Self-Esteem

    4. Fatigue and Time Pressure

    5. Loneliness, Isolation, and Boredom and

    Absence of Romantic Love in Marriage

    6. Financial Difficulties

    7. Sexual Problems in Marriage

    8. Menstrual and Physiological Problems

    9. Problems with the Children

    10. A Brief Visit with Father Time

    11. The Last Word

    A Subsequent Note from the Author

    Notes

    List of materials for the family,

    by Dr. James Dobson

    MOM:

    THE DOMESTIC

    ENGINEER

    You may have noticed that this book is dedicated to my beloved son, Ryan. This little lad is now three years old, and he is a certified, card-carrying toddler. He has every single characteristic described in the textbooks as being typical for children between eighteen and forty months of age. During this dynamic period of life, emotional enthusiasm and excitement are supposed to bubble forth from some inexhaustible wellspring of energy, and so it has been with Ryan. In fact, the very day he turned eighteen months of age, it was as though a little voice whispered in his ear, Now, kid, now! Ryan began running that afternoon and he’s still moving at maximum velocity. He isn’t a malicious child and he rarely defies authority in a blatant manner. But he is enormously curious and he gets into everything. If it is humanly possible, Ryan can be expected to spill it, break it, disassemble it, spread it, or render it inoperable. Trying to get him to be still and quiet is like nailing Jell-O to a tree: it’s impossible! And, of course, his personal safety teeters on the brink of disaster from moment to moment. In fact, it is necessary for an emotionally stable adult to follow Ryan around all day, just to keep him from killing himself! Occasionally that responsibility falls to me.

    I was at home alone with Ryan one morning when I suddenly realized that it had been approximately two minutes since my little explorer had made any noise. (When one babysits with Ryan, silence is definitely not golden.) I immediately began looking for him, searching each room of the house, but he was not to be found. Finally, I glanced through the kitchen window and saw that Ryan had managed to crawl into the back of a truck which some builders had parked in our driveway. The bed of the truck was taller than Ryan’s head, and it is still a mystery as to how he climbed so high. When I found him, he was trying desperately to get down. He was hanging off the back of the truck from his waist downward, yet his feet were still suspended twelve to fifteen inches above the ground. Seeing that he was going to fall, I slipped up behind him without him hearing me coming and placed my hands outward to catch him when he fell. But as I drew nearer, I heard him talking to himself. He was not crying. He didn’t complain or scream in terror. He was simply probing empty space with one foot and saying softly, Somebody help the boy! Won’t somebody come help the boy? His words characterized his way of life, for helping the boy has become a full-time job for Ryan’s loving mother and me.

    Shortly after the truck-bed experience, little Ryan let me see another side of his sparkling personality. My wife, Shirley, broke her leg while skiing, thereby granting me the chance to do her thing for a few weeks. I learned a great deal during that time about the color of grass on the other side of the fence: it not only wasn’t any greener . . . it wasn’t even edible! The very first morning that I was on the job, Ryan began teaching me the rules to the game called motherhood. He awakened me with a loud cry at 6 a.m. Being jarred from a deep, dreamy sleep, I staggered from my bed and began feeling my way across the house toward Ryan’s room. All this time he was crying at the top of his lungs. (That sound has much the same effect on the nerves as fingernails scratching a chalkboard.) When I reached his door and pushed it open, the crying suddenly stopped and a cheery little voice said, Is breakfast ready? I said, I’m doing the best I can, Ryan!

    So I went into the kitchen to fix the kid something palatable to eat, but was still at least 80 percent asleep. I stood there staring into the cabinets with unfocused eyes, hoping something quick and simple would tumble out. Meanwhile, Ryan had climbed down from his bed and followed me into the kitchen. He tried repeatedly to engage me in conversation—which was the last thing on earth that his sleepy father wanted or needed at that moment.

    He was saying, Are we having bacon?

    and Why isn’t the milk poured?

    and Is it almost ready?

    But I was ignoring his inquiries. He must have asked me a dozen questions, all of which went unanswered. Then I tuned in just in time to hear him sigh and say, I’m getting so tired of you!

    So what’s a mother to do, folks? I don’t know! I went back and reread my book Dare to Discipline but it didn’t say anything about handling the pre-sunrise activities of an ambitious toddler. I told my wife if she would just come back to work I would rise up and call her blessed each day, as I sit among the elders in the gates.¹ In fact, I could hardly wait to sit among the elders in the gates again.

    Through these brief forays into the responsibilities of motherhood and from the experience gained in counseling women, I have developed a deep appreciation for the unique skills required of wives and mothers. In my view, their job is of utmost importance to the health and vitality of our society, and I regret the lack of respect and status given to today’s homemaker. Even that word housewife has come to symbolize unfulfillment, inferiority, and insignificance. How unfortunate! We can make no greater mistake as a nation than to devalue the importance of the home and the sustenance which children should be given there.

    However, home-work imposes some special frustrations and tensions on women, and we should face them squarely. Even for a mother who is deeply committed to her family and its welfare, there may be times when she feels like running away from her tribe. Small children, such as Ryan, can be exhausting and irritating to those who must care for them 365 days per year. The little butterballs are noisy and they bicker with each other and they make incredible messes and they wet their pants and they scratch the furniture and they steadily unravel mom’s jangled nerves throughout the long days. Truly, it takes a superwoman to raise a bevy of children without occasionally wondering, What in the world am I doing here?!

    Women also encounter other problems and pressures which are less common among men. Loneliness for adult companionship is particularly prevalent for the woman who remains at home. She often experiences deep, persistent yearnings for human contact. She longs for laughter and love and the romantic moments from her own younger days. Her daily dedication to soap operas on television is a reflection of this need for involvement in the lives of people, for her existence has become so isolated. It is no small problem.

    This brings us to the most common source of frustration expressed to me in marital counseling: women who have experienced the unmet needs described above are often totally incapable of explaining their feelings to their husbands. The wife who knows something vital has disappeared from her life naturally reaches out to her man to supply the missing ingredient. She desperately wants him to understand her fears and frustrations, but she can’t seem to get through to him. Oh, she tries, no doubt about that! But instead of her effort bringing empathy and support, it is likely to be interpreted as nagging, complaining, self-pity, and eye-gouging hostility of various forms. And every man alive is equipped with a little button somewhere in the center of his skull which permits him to tune out that kind of unnecessary noise. One wife wrote me the following note, expressing the precise sentiments of a million others: Lack of communication causes most of my depression. When I try to resolve our problems or talk about them, my husband gives me a cold wall of silence. He becomes extremely negative whenever I try to discuss anything. He feels we have no problems!

    Now I have not written this book to bad-rap American men. We’ve had plenty of that in recent years. It has become popular to depict father as an idiot, a bigot, an exploiter, a misogynist, a football fanatic, a sex maniac, and a self-centered egotist. To hear some angry females tell it, men are lower than a snake on snowshoes. Being a man myself, I tend to take those charges rather personally. But it is true, I believe, that too many men do not understand the emotional needs of their wives. They live in a vastly different world with ample frustrations of their own. Either they are unable to put themselves in a woman’s place, seeing and feeling what she experiences, or else they are preoccupied with their own work and simply aren’t listening. For whatever reason, women have needs which men do not comprehend. It is this breakdown of understanding that has motivated this book and its title, What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew about Women.

    The remaining pages of this text, then, are devoted to the American woman, with particular reference to her home and family life. There are workable solutions to the problems and frustrations which she faces there, and I have shared some of the approaches which have been effective in the lives of others. I have also discussed the nature of feminine emotions and how they influence her day-by-day activities. In short, the message of this book is designed to accomplish these objectives:

    1. Help women explain their unique needs to their husbands.

    2. Assist in breaking the shackles of emotional isolation.

    3. Provide the keys to more fulfilling motherhood.

    4. Discuss the common sources of depression in women, and their solutions.

    5. Offer specific answers to everyday irritants.

    6. Point the pathway toward greater self-esteem and acceptance.

    7. Describe the real meaning of romantic love.

    These are ambitious purposes, admittedly, and they sound a bit like the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. However, it is easier to shoot straight when one knows where the target is. Let’s begin with a discussion of the sources of depression in women.

    SOURCES OF

    DEPRESSION IN WOMEN

    Perhaps the most inescapable conclusion I have drawn from psychological counseling of women concerns the commonness of depression and emotional apathy as a recurring fact of life. The majority of adult females seem to experience these times of despair, discouragement, disinterest, distress, despondency, and disenchantment with circumstances as they are. I have come to call this condition The D’s for obvious reasons. A counselee will say, I have the D’s today, and I know precisely what she means.

    Depression is not uniquely characteristic of women, certainly. But it occurs less frequently in men and is apparently more crisis oriented. In other words, men get depressed over specific problems such as a business setback or an illness. However, they are less likely to experience the vague, generalized, almost unidentifiable feeling of discouragement which many women encounter on a regular basis. Even a cloudy day may be enough to bring on a physical and emotional slowdown, known as the blahs, for those who are particularly vulnerable to depression.

    The impact of depression can be minimized somewhat by an understanding of the cyclical nature of emotions occurring in both sexes. Haven’t you observed from your own experience that highs are followed by lows and lows by highs? There is a regular fluctuation, almost like a mathematical sine curve (illustrated below) from a peak of enthusiasm to the depth of gloominess.

    9780842378895_0016_001

    Furthermore, individual personalities do not extend much farther in one direction than they do the other. In other words, if we draw a line across the middle of the curve, symbolizing the emotional center (neither high nor low), the distance from there to the peak for a particular person, is almost the same as the distance from there to the valley. Let’s look at an example or two: Type I people, characterized below, don’t get very excited about anything. These Steady Freddies and Stable Mabels don’t cheer enthusiastically at football games and their laughter is never boisterous. Good news is received about as calmly as bad. On the other hand, they never get very discouraged, either. They are rather dull people, but at least they’re consistently dull! You can count on them. Today will be much like yesterday, tomorrow, and next November.

    9780842378895_0016_002

    TYPE I PERSONALITIES

    By contrast, Type II people (symbolized below) are the world’s true swingers. Their emotions bounce from the rafters down to the basement and back up the wall again.

    9780842378895_0017_001

    TYPE II PERSONALITIES

    We all know at least one Type II individual who gets extremely happy every now and then. He arises in the morning and giggles at the very thought of the sunrise. He waves at the birds and grins at the flowers and whistles zippity-doo-dah throughout the day. Beware of this jolly fellow! I can guarantee you that he is going to crash not many days hence. And when he falls, great will be the collapse and disintegration thereof. Nothing will go right and life won’t be worth living and he will have no friends and woe will fill the entire earth. He’s so sentimental he will even weep at supermarket openings. He is, truly, an emotional yo-yo. And for reasons known only to a confused Cupid, this Type II extremist will probably marry a Type I bore, and the two of them will scratch and claw each other regularly for the next forty years.

    My wife and I attended a symphony in Berlin during our first trip to Europe. Sitting in front of us was a young man who was probably studying music at a local university. He went into some kind of strange ecstasy during the first half of the performance, swaying to the orchestration with his eyes closed, and standing to cheer after every number. Following the last performance before the intermission, he went crazy with delight; you would have thought USC had just scored the winning touchdown against Notre Dame for the national

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1