Book Review: For Women Only

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Book Title: For Women Only


Author: Shaunti Feldhahn

Author's web site: http://www.shaunti.com/

Date: 2004

Publisher: Multnomah

ISBN: 1-59052-317-2

Length: 180 pages of text

Quote: "Hundreds of personal and written interviews with men--including a professional survey--form the core of this book."

Shaunti Feldhahn wanted to write a novel with a male protagonist. So she asked men for guidance about how he would think and feel in certain situations. Men she knew started sharing things with her. She did a formal survey of a few hundred men she didn't know, and found the same general tendencies. A lot of young Christian husbands wished their wives "knew certain things about men." She summarizes what she learned as "seven revelations."

Some readers have commented that presenting the "seven revelations" in a non-judgmental way makes the book read like some of the antifeminist books of bygone centuries, where the woman had to do all the giving in and never talk back. I don't read it that way. I think there's a clear intention to open a dialogue, paving the way for For Men Only. As Rebecca Johnson says, if a wife reads For Women Only while her husband reads For Men Only, they are in for a lovely time.

What were the "seven revelations"?

1. The husbands wanted respect. Some of them didn't realize that there were things they could be doing to earn more respect. Some really did seem to have self-esteem problems; without necessarily confirming that someone had lost respect for them, they'd act like jerks because they'd rather feel that everyone was against them than that they'd lost someone's respect.

Not asking for directions was a matter of self-respect for some of these men. Never mind whether a problem could have been solved in one-tenth as much time; they wanted to feel that they'd solved it all by themselves.

2. They were insecure. The greater their need to "be in control," the more intensely they tended to feel that the situation was out of control.

3. They recognized that the biological function of a male human, most of the time, is "providing." Even if their wives were earning enough money to support a family in reasonable comfort, they wanted to feel that the family depended on their jobs. (Foolish, you say? Consider the alternative.)

4. They wanted sex. Most wanted either more encounters or more enthusiasm than they were currently getting.

5. They were obsessively visual. Although they didn't report that "thinking in pictures" impeded thought and communication for them in anything like the way it did for Temple Grandin, most of these men wanted their wives to understand that they did "think in pictures." They'd see an attractive woman for a few seconds, down the aisle in a store, on TV during a commercial, and the "picture" of her body would float back through their minds for days. Feldhahn's own husband expressed surprise that, when women say a man is attractive, we may or may not mean we feel any physical attraction to him, and most of us don't keep trying to visualize him naked.

6. They wanted more, not less, romance in their lives. However, they had different ideas of what was "romantic" than some of their wives did. If they admitted to thinking that the main reason for a candlelight dinner would be to conceal that the food didn't look quite right, they still wanted the "romance" of doing fun things together...hiking, biking, skiing, swimming, sailing, camping, and if their wives went about it in the right way even remodelling the house together.

7. They cared more about appearances than they were entirely happy to admit. "Women need to realize that their doubling in size is like a man going from being a corporate raider to a minimum-wage slacker," one of these guys told Feldhahn. "She is not taking care of herself, so she feels bad about her looks, she has little energy, and we are limiting our opportunities" to go out and have fun, another husband complained.

Some of us may have noticed these things long before 2004. For others of us they may not have been relevant: some men don't think in pictures; I was blessed with a hand-and-ear thinker. Then again...he died, and the "seven revelations" have contributed to the fact that I've been using the phrase "Significant Other" to refer to the same privacy fanatic for all these years.

For many Christian wives, these "seven revelations" may be invaluable. Feldhahn is not the only one out there who notices the "Wide Loads" waddling around many churches on Sunday mornings. "Wide Loads" of both sexes say, "Our emphasis should be on spiritual love, not physical attractiveness." Maybe so, but unattractiveness is not the worst consequence of obesity. Male "Wide Loads" become grumpy; females become depressed; their social and family lives become boring, and they may die "old" at or even before age forty.

Some Christian wives might reasonably say, "Didn't Feldhahn even try to explain to these men what happens to a woman who has had too many babies, too close together?" If she did, she doesn't mention it in this book. (When an earlier version of this review appeared on Yahoo, someone commented that at a book discussion Feldhahn had indicated that some of the husbands appreciated effort.)

She also doesn't mention the way some men's willingness to desert an obese wife can become its own revenge. I knew an alleged Baptist who walked out on his wife because the fourth baby had produced more weight gain, impaired thyroid function, and depression than the first three had. He'd been secretly exchanging e-mails with a woman who had posted pictures showing that she had a good figure...some years before he actually met her, anyway. When he found an opportunity to meet her she seemed more functional than his wife, so he left his wife for her. Hah. About a year after the divorce, the wife had recovered and looked pretty again, and the homewrecker had become one of those sloppy, heavy, middle-aged women who can be mistaken for sloppy, heavy, middle-aged men. Idiot Boy went to custody court to attack his wife's character, took a look at her, and has been repenting of his folly ever since.

Feldhahn doesn't actually say "The family that works out together, stays together," but when she quotes all these young men pleading for more romantic physical activity and complaining about how hard it is to be faithful to a fat, depressed wife, she comes close to it. Her take on this idea is positive. What wife or husband doesn't want more time to unwind from work, more time to supervise the kids while attending to each other, more cheap mini-vacation time, a good-looking partner, and a cheerful and healthy family? Getting out and moving around together can be the key to all of these things.