That’s an interesting measuring stick. Would I want my children to be like this person? Okay, now that we have covered the big four character traits, we can move ahead to the next reason why people marry the wrong person.

Reason Number Three - Emotions

Okay, let’s go on to the third reason why people marry the wrong person, which is that the man doesn’t understand the emotional needs of the woman. Now I focus specifically here on the man and not the woman because this is an insight from Judaism, which I think is one of the most important insights about making marriage work. And therefore, I bring it into this discussion because I think it’s very important that you’re aware of it when you’re dating in order to make a good decision.

A man needs to be aware of the emotional needs of a woman. Judaism we say men and women have fundamental different generic needs. They have different emotional needs. Do you know what the essential emotional need of a woman is, and the essential emotional need of a man is? In Judaism we say the fundamental emotional need of a woman is to be loved, and the fundamental emotional need of a man is to be respected. Now what does it mean that a woman needs to be loved? There are the three “A”s of making a woman feel loved. They are Attention, Appreciation and Affection. In Judaism we say that it’s the man’s obligation as a husband, to make sure that his wife is happy. And this extends into the sexual arena as well. Actually in the Bible we see that it is an obligation upon the man to take responsibility to be sure that his wife’s emotional and sexual needs are satisfied. This is not true for the woman. A woman is not obligated to meet the sexual needs of a man. And I’m sure that this might be of interest to you and you’d like to find out more about it, although I will leave it at this point for this particular presentation. I do discuss it more in my lecture for married couples. So it’s very important that a woman who is considering a man, picks somebody who does have this consciousness. Again, in my experience, the average secular person does not have a sensitivity for this insight. As a counselor I find this principle to be extremely important in making marriage work. If a man will take seriously the emotional needs of his wife, he understands that there is a need there to be loved, then often this will go a long way to making the marriage successful.

Hey, how about us males? Doesn’t a man need to be loved too?