One Thing?

Sarah Baron over at Anonymous8 posted a quote from Rabbi Radinsky, who has many years of experience dealing with marriages, summarized the essential needs of men and women as follows:

In marriage, men and women each only need one thing. Women need to feel secure. Men need to feel important.

When I read the quote I immediately thought to myself, this sounds a lot like this verse from Ephesians:

However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Ephesians 5:33

Of course Emmerson Eggerichs, author of the book “Love and Respect” sees this dynamic as key to a successful marriage.

I stated a while back in my post “Thinking, Being and Doing”  that I try to shy away from “one size fits all” solutions to marriage issues.

While I do believe that love and respect (or security and feeling important, as Rabbi Radinsky stated) are critical ingredients to a lasting and intimate marriage, I’m not sure I would say that these constitute the “one thing” that guarantees you’ll have the kind of lasting marriage you want.

The Long Haul Project  website regularly interviews couples and asks them what one thing they would offer as the secrete to a successful marriage. You can listen to some or all of them using this link . There are an interesting and diverse set of answers from the various couples.

Truthfully, I’m not sure there even is a one thing, at least not exactly. I don’t think marriage is quite that simple, because anything that involves real people with real issues is going to be more complex than a simple panacea statement will adequately address. I do think there are some universal biblical truths that point us in the right direction (such as the love and respect truth of Ephesians 5), but I also think that each couple has to figure out how to apply those truths to their own marriage.

So with these thoughts in mind, I’d like to ask a slightly different and more pointed question in the form of separate short polls; one for women (just below) and one for men (scroll down)

For email and RSS readers: Lady's Poll Link

For email and RSS readers: Men's Poll Link