Collabotrating on What Wives and Hubands WANT
03/24/2003 08:59 p.m.

this is a partial response to Cathlyn Cartier's comment on my poem "What Husbands and Wives WANT"  which I also sent to her in an IM

more on collaboration.
as I said, yes; absolutly something missing.

here are some thoughts:
What I wish I could convey:
that there is a doorway into the heart of a person and the way into that doorway is different for a man and a woman.  Because of their different needs and makeup it is difficult for men to discern that doorway into the heart of a woman, especially if he insists on thinking of the needs of a woman in terms of what is reasonable to him.  The same thing is true from the womans's perspective.

there is within a person an earnest, desperate hunger to receive an intangible something from their mate, far beyond anything physical but including physical.  Husbands and wives are left with their hunger, feeling alone and unable to change the other person. 

Men, because of their makeup and needs sometimes work very hard to give their wives what they themselves desire --men can seek to respect their wives but neglect to be gentle and neglect to cover them (cover: --to overlook an offense, to forgive, to love some one jsut as they are even if they never change).  Men tend to justify themselves and think, I've done everything I know to do (and he has if he is thinking from his perspective).  but love is what a woman needs. and so a man's efforts can be of no avail in filling the wife's "love tank".

the same is true of women.  a woman can put forth huge effort in giving a man love.  covering, offering affection, but neglecting to respect him because this does not seem important.  Neither one of them gets what they want.

so men and women need to learn that there is a language they don't understand and seek to learn the language of actions that fill the "love tank" of their mate.

so then there is hurt when a person feels neglected or not receiving what they need to fill their "love tank".  and then they withdraw and becoem isolated and incapable of relating to the other in a way that will cause the other to blossom and BE what will meet their idosyncratic needs.