Focus on the Family Broadcast

Opening: 

Teaser:

Mike Bechtle: “…We saw one movie one time where Richard Gere is coming up an escalator. He’s in a tuxedo and he’s holding a rose for her. He just floats up the escalator. And I could hear my wife lose her breath (Laughter) right next to me. And in my head I’m thinking, “There is no way I could do that.” 

John: Yeah, I can’t compete. 

Mike: That’s so foreign. Yeah and I think a lot of men, that’s what happens is we get an image of what romance looks like and we say, “I can’t do it.” So, we feel really helpless in that department.” 

End of Teaser

John: That’s Dr. Mike Bechtle, describing a pretty common challenge that a lot of women have in marriage and that is understanding their husband. And we hope to clear up some things for you today on “Focus on the Family” with your host, Focus president and author, Jim Daly and I’m John Fuller.

Jim Daly: Hey, John, I think we’re gonna have some fun today, but there is a serious side to what we want to talk about. We’re gonna present an insider’s view, let’s call it, of how men think and act and … and why we do some of the things we do. Now all the women just turned the volume up (Laughing) so …

John: I’d really like to know why he did that.

Jim: Yeah, why did he do that? But our goal is to help men and women better understand their relationship with each other, especially in the marriage context.

And you know, we have a marriage retreat center for those marriages that are really struggling, Hope Restored. And I will tell you, the counseling approach is to really help people, help couples particularly, communicate better. That’s what they’re doing. They’re getting these terribly frustrated marriages in there and they’re teaching them how to better communicate. So, that’s the serous side of what we want to talk about today. Understanding each other as a husband and a wife is important, so that we can love each other in a way that honors the Lord.

John: Yeah and what you’ve described are kinda broken relationships. This is gonna be kind of a tune-up, I think—

Jim: Right.

John: –on the lighter side for couples that maybe like Dena and me have been married for a long time and every now and then we just look at each other and think, “What?” (Laughter) “I’m not understanding at all.” And we want to help you in some fine tuning there.

Jim: Yeah and if you’re in a serious spot, call us. We have other resources and things that we can do to help you in that moment. But this is like a tune-up, as you said, John.

John: All right and our number is 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY if we can be of any help to you, 800-232-6459.

Jim: Well, our guest today is Mike Bechtle. He’s an author, speaker, corporate consultant, ministry coach. I mean, it sounds like he’s done it all, John.

John: He’s a busy guy. 

Jim: He’s married to Diane with two grown children and I think at least three grandchildren, maybe more. (Laughing) He’s written a fun and insightful book with a great title. I can’t believe a book has never been titled this, which is I Wish He Had Come With Instructions: A Woman’s Guide to a Man’s Brain. 

Body:

Jim: Mike, welcome to “Focus on the Family.”

Mike: Thank you, it’s a privilege to be with you guys.

Jim: Now why did you write this book, Mike? I mean, you’re a traitor to the male species here! (Laughter)

Mike: You know what, I …

Jim: Why are you given ’em a tool, a map to understand what … what we are and how we think?

Mike: I’ve heard that so often. I tell me that I was gonna write this book and they said, “No, don’t give away our secrets.” (Laughter)

Jim: I mean, we really don’t have many secrets, do we?

Mike: Oh, that’s true. (Laughter) We’re pretty simple. But you know, it was interesting, because I started looking at books that had been written and most of ’em were written by women about how men think. But I realized women haven’t been inside a man’s brain.

Jim: They probably know us pretty good though.

Mike: Oh, they do (Laughter), but sometimes it’s a matter of guessing, looking through their perspective, trying to figure out why we are the way we are. And that’s why when I started writing, I thought, I can’t make it a book with a lot of advice, because I haven’t been inside a woman’s brain.

Jim: Okay, let’s start with that typical scenario, the one that probably frustrates most married couples at about year five, probably.

Mike: Uh-hm.

Jim: And that’s “Okay, you want to eat out tonight?” “I don’t know.” Well, where do you want to go?” “You pick.” “You sure? “Yeah, go ahead. You pick.” And guess what? We’re stupid enough as husbands to pick somethin’. (Laughter) We’re pullin’ into the parking lot and she’s goin’, “I really don’t want to eat here. I mean, why would you pick this place?”

Jim: What’s happenin’ right there in that communication?

Mike: Oh, yeah, I think it goes back so much to the differences between men and women, because she a lot of times will say, “Do you want to eat out tonight? Do you want to stop and get something?” And he thinks it’s a question. (Laughter) And he thinks that he doesn’t realize she’s hinting and saying, “I would like to eat out. So, his response is, “Not really.”

Mike: Now probably he’ll want to because men don’t give up that opportunity. But if she’s asking and he says, “I don’t want to go out tonight,” then she’s hurt because he said no and she’s thinking, doesn’t he know how tired I am? He doesn’t pick up on all the hints.

Jim: Right.

Mike: And so, it changes the whole dynamic.

Jim: That’s part of it, but it’s just that simple communication, isn’t it?

Mike: Yeah.

Jim: What is a better way for a woman to speak to her husband so that he does get it, that it’s more I guess, clearer what you mean and what you say?

Mike: I think to recognize the way a man thinks, to recognize that if she says, “Do you want to stop for dinner?” he won’t pick anything out of that. He’s gonna have a solution. He’s gonna have an answer to that question and he doesn’t know there’s other things associated with it. So, to recognize that he thinks in categories. He thinks one thing at a time and so, to be able to address him in that way and just respond with, “Would you like to stop for dinner? I’d really like to have a little break tonight.”

Jim: Yeah, I have you done that, John?

John: No. (Laughter) I remember one time Dena said, “I want to go there and I drove past. I was like, we’re only 10 minutes from our home. Let’s just go home and eat. (Laughter) The category thing totally was where I was at that night.

Jim: That’s a big ouch, isn’t it?

John: It was, yeah.

Jim: Yeah. I’m tryin’ to think. The questions as questions, not as—

Mike: Yeah.

Jim: –statements.

John: As a problem to be solved.

Jim: That’s probably a good thing for me to take home tonight, which is, you know, don’t always take a question as a question.

Mike: Well, John, you—

Jim: Take it as a big hint.

Mike: –mentioned it well, too, that it’s a problem to be solved. And that’s the way most men think is, when there’s an issue, what do we do so it’s no longer an issue? We have to solve that. And so, if he’s taking that stance, she needs to be able to recognize that’s how he tends to go.

Jim: You talk in your book, I Wish He Had Come with Instructions: The Woman’s Guide to a Man’s Brain, you mention in there these ideas of differences and similarities. And I can remember when Jean and I did our premarital counseling, which I think every young couple should do, I think out of 12 couples, three walked out and said they weren’t gonna get married. And that’s important. Even research shows that if a couple gets at least 10 hours of premarital counseling, they’re likelihood of staying together in a lifetime commitment goes up substantially.

So, that’s a good place to start. But in that counseling session, we would leave there going, “We are so similar. We are so much alike. That’s why we love each other so much.” And then after we were married a while—

Mike: Yeah.

Jim: –man, I realized I’m extrovert; she’s introvert. I’m a morning person; she’s a night person. I’m dark chocolate; she’s light, milk chocolate. I mean, it was just that everything was different and then those differences were the things that bubbled to the surface as soon as our love fog cleared (Chuckling).

Mike: Right.

Jim: And then what do you do?

John: Love fog.

Jim: And that’s common to most couples, isn’t it?

Mike: Well, yeah. I think the similarities is what draws us together in the first spot. We see those similarities. After we are together for a while, we start seeing the differences. My son got married about two years ago and he was in a six-year relationship. It was a Skype relationship. She lived in Mexico. He lived up here. And so, they didn’t get to see each other maybe once a year.

But they had this Skype courtship. And then I asked him right after they got married, I said, “What’s the biggest surprise been?” And he said, “You know, the biggest surprise is, that when I was in high school, I dated girls that were just like me and I always thought, I’m gonna marry somebody who has similar … the more similar they are to me, the better it’s gonna be. That’s how I’ll know.” And he says, “My wife is so radically different. We are exact opposites, but that’s what makes it so rich. That’s been the biggest surprise. The differences is really what gives us the synergy to make this work.”

Jim: Well, and it’s interesting to me and I say it a lot on the program, God wired us to kinda marry somebody that’s different from us.

Mike: Yeah.

Jim: In your book, you say wives tend to see male differences two ways (Chuckling) and these are funny. One as problems to be fixed. How many of you ladies just said, “That’s right. That’s exactly right.” (Laughter)

Mike: Amen, amen.

Jim: I heard it right through these microphones. How did that happen? And secondly, something they have to live with. That’s just the way men are. Yep, you hear it again? I heard it through the microphones (Laughing). I mean, women’ll say, yeah, that’s it. But I want to say first, talk about that, but then also what’s the better way for women to think about their men?

Mike: It really goes back to those similarities again and those differences because when you put women together that have been married for a while, they see the differences that they didn’t see at the beginning and they don’t know what to do with them. And so, they think, okay, this isn’t what I signed up for.

They’re different than they were when I married them. They have changed. And so, they start talking about it and say, well, this is just the way men are. So, one way is, I need to fix him, which is always gonna be frustrating, because we have trouble changing ourselves, much less changing somebody else.

And then the other one is, this is the way he is. I just have to cope with it. And then that’s gonna be frustrating over time because we always live with the filter that he is … he must be wrong if I have to cope with it. He’s not gonna change. And that has that mind-set that comes from a mind-set that says, “I need to fix him. He needs to be healed.”

And that goes back to your introversion and extroversion, too, that a lot of times extroverts feel like, you know, if an introvert was just able to talk more freely, they would be better for ’em.

Jim: Yeah, well and I like that analogy of that healing part, because I think we’re talking generalities, probably—

Mike: Right.

Jim: –the 80-20 rule here. We need to acknowledge that and you might be a woman saying, “I have more of the attributes of the male in this or vice versa.” We get that.

But in context, a lot of women laugh at that statement, “That’s just the way he is; you gotta live with it,” probably because a lot of women before them like their moms and their grandmothers tried to correct (Chuckling) behavior in their grandfather and in their dad and it didn’t work. So, there’s patterns there that they’re picking up on to really be truthful about this, wouldn’t you say?

Mike: Well, sure. It goes back to when we were growing up. We watched and learned from our parents. And they could tell us whatever they wanted to, but years later when we’re under pressure, we tend to respond the same way that we saw our parents respond. So, we picked it up. Those patterns are gonna be there for a really long time. We choose to work around them, but it’s pretty set in stone.

Jim: Yeah.

Jim: Let me flip that the other direction, as well, because sometimes what God is expecting of us is to accept our mate as He’s wired ’em, not trying to always change them. (Chuckling) That would come as a[n] “ah-ha” for a lot of people, as well—both husbands and wives. So, what about that? Is it really my job to change who you are?

Mike: I think our job is to accept each other for who we are right then. There are certain things we can change about other people. There’s certain things we can’t. A person’s “maleness” is not gonna change. And if a woman understands the maleness of her husband, that’s something we can’t try and fix. But there are things in all of us that we can change and need to work on.

Jim: And that’d be more biblically centered—

Mike: Sure.

Jim: –I would think, being, you know, full of the Spirit—love and joy and peace and goodness and kindness and mercy. How did your wife change you?

Mike: When we first got married, there was the stereotype I had that I knew how to be a good husband. I had listened to Dr. Dobson for years. (Laughter) I really had and I knew what I was doing. I was going to a seminary. I was taking courses in marriage counseling and so forth. So, we got married and I thought I had this figured out.

And then I started seeing those differences and it was hard for both of us to accept some of those, because we wanted to change the other person. I remember the first time that we’d been married about a week or so. We both got in bed one night and I heard the words every man dreads, “We need to talk.” (laughter)

Jim: Right.

Mike: And I am a morning person. I wake about 5 o’clock every morning. I’m ready to go by 5:05. She’s a night person.

Jim: (Chuckling)

Mike: Nine o’clock at night I can’t form multi-syllable words or—

Jim: Right. (Laughing)

Mike: –or walk upright. And she said that and all I can think of is, okay, don’t fall asleep. Don’t fall asleep. (Laughter) Don’t fall asleep. And she was going on about something and I didn’t know how to respond to that. It was so different, but I thought, somehow we need to change this so that I can be more of a night person. (Laughter) It’s not gonna happen. And the more we talked and over the years, we’ve realized that there are certain things that’s just how we’re wired.

Jim: Yeah.

Mike: But there’s a lot of other things that have changed because of that. A lot of it has to do with communication. She has had to teach me what romance looks like from her perspective.

Jim: Wow.

Mike: She’s had to teach me what communication looks like when I say something through my filter, how it comes across to her.

Jim: I’m interested in the romance side. Did that come, you know, with some grief? Was she flabbergasted that, you know, there was that component missing? Did she say, “Okay, I’m gonna have to teach Mike how to be romantic in our relationship?”

Mike: No, actually, I think it came from recognizing that there is a stereotype for men of what romance looks like. We see it on the screen. We see the leading men. They say all the right things.

Jim: They dance well.

Mike: Oh, yeah and they …

Jim: Fred Astaire.

Mike: Oh, yeah and they come up. We saw one movie one time where Richard Gere is coming up an escalator. He’s in a tuxedo and he’s holding a rose for her. He just floats up the escalator. And I could hear my wife lose her breath (Laughter) right next to me. And in my head I’m thinking, “There is no way I could do that.”

John: Yeah, I can’t compete.

Mike: That’s so foreign. Yeah and I think a lot of men, that’s what happens is we get an image of what romance looks like and we say, “I can’t do it.” So, we feel really helpless in that department. And a lot of women, because that’s the model, they think my husband is not romantic. Men are not romantic. And they tend to be desperately romantic, but it looks different.

Jim: Well, and—

Mike: So, we have to talk about it.

Jim: –you’re right. You’re right that we pull away, too. If we don’t hit the mark—

Mike: Yeah.

Jim: –the first or second time, then we stop tryin’ pretty quickly.

Mike: Well, if it’s not safe and we get a response that backs us up, we’re not gonna go there again.

John: Dr. Mike Bechtel is our guest on “Focus on the Family” and his book, I Wish He Had Come with Instructions: (laughter) A Woman’s Guide to a Man’s Brain is available…

Jim: Laughin’ thinkin’ about that. (Laughter)

John: from us here. We’ve got it and a CD or a download of our conversation today at www.focusonthefamily.com/radio.

Jim: Mike, one of the things, many things in this book were really eye-opening, but one of them was this idea of vertical relationship versus horizontal relationship. And you said in the book that women tend to move in that horizontal relationship fluidly. And you look at friendships, you look at their connections. It’s self-evident almost.

Mike: Right.

Jim: Men are very vertical (Chuckling), but describe for us what you were getting at.

Mike: You watch kids play in a playground and the girls are playing school or they’re selling something and they’re talkin’ to each other. They’re making sure they all have roles and they’re making sure everybody is taken care of.

Mike: When you watch boys play in a playground, it’s all about who’s the strongest, who can be the most physical.

Jim: So, we’re measuring ourselves.

Mike: We’re measuring ourselves.

Jim: Who’s the No. 1 guy.

Mike: Yeah.

Jim: And where do I land?

Mike: In fact, I heard one psychologist say one time that you can look at a boy when he’s 6-years-old and get a pretty good idea of what he’s gonna be like when he’s 60, that the basic temperament, who he is, how he responds to things is gonna be there.

And it’s gonna look difference, but the basics are there. And so, you watch boys play in a playground, 60 years later there’s really not a lot of difference. They’re just taller. And so, you take men, they still have those same characteristics. We’re critiquing ourselves based on other people. Who’s above me? Who’s below me? And it’s not necessarily in a prideful sense, but it’s just how we’re looking at how we position.

I think I do it. We have a neighbor that’s lives about a block from us and he’s a good friend, but he has every tool you could want in your shop.

Jim: Ah, that’s a perfect neighbor.

Mike: Well, it’s like he lives at Home Depot (Laughter) with smaller door. And …

Jim: Does he loan?

Mike: (Laughing) Well, yes he does and that’s the problem, is because one time I was talkin’ to him, ’cause I do woodworking. And I was talking to him one time and he said, “You know what, if you ever need a tool that you don’t have, never go out and buy it. Just come see me. I’ll loan it to you” and my wife was with me. So several months later I needed to do something and I needed that tool and she said, “Well, why don’t you go ask Al?” And everything inside of me thought, no, I don’t (Laughter) want to ask Al, because that would put me under him. I would want to go buy the tool, because if I use it now and I need it again, I’ll have to borrow it from him again.

And I went over and I actually did do some, couple of times, do some work in his shop. We had a great time, but still, I’m not borrowin’ tools from him. (Laughter) I’m not going there because men don’t do those kinds of things. It’s that comparison.

Jim: Gives Al a little power over you.

Mike: It does. (Laughter) It does, just a little.

Jim: Are we talkin’ like guys here or what?

Mike: Oh, man.

Jim: It’s crazy.

Hey, Mike, this kinda fits in right here with what you’re talkin’ about with your neighbor’s tools, but oftentime[s] and here at Focus we hear from a lot of wives who are just simply saying, “My husband does not connect emotionally. He doesn’t have that gear.”

Jim: What is happening there for men in that vertical kind of relationship, where we have virtually no horizontal capability? And what can a wife do to better understand how her husband’s wired and maybe how she can help pull him in that direction, rather than put him in a deeper hole?

Mike: Yeah, I think a lot of it goes back to how we were brought up, is because men generally were taught not to express a lot of emotion, but you–

Jim: Boy, it’s true.

Mike: –but you watch when a group of men win the world series or they win the Stanley Cup and watch what happens with that team. They express all kinds of emotion. And I think men have very deep emotions, but they have been taught not to express the soft ones. Don’t cry. Don’t come across in this way.

And so, when women say that my man doesn’t show any emotion, he shows anger. He’ll show some other things, but he’s not showing the softer ones. It’s in there. One of the best things she can do is to have real conversations with him and just to be able to talk through it, not in the moment, because when you try and mix emotion and logic, it usually doesn’t work very well.

But, just over dinner, over coffee, just to be able to talk about it. So, when things like this happen, what does it look like? And even to use a phrase, instead of saying, “What do you feel about this?” say, “What do you think about this?”

Jim: Yeah, that’s a good one.

Mike: Because usually if you say, “What do you think about this?” he’ll tell you what he feels.

Jim: Mike, in that regard, you as the wife, you can ask the husband to, tell you what he’s thinking. But what is an additional step that could be taken there, especially for the husband that is a bit handicapped in this area. I can remember for me. let me give you a practical example for Jean and for me. You know, when I was a boy, I was 9-years-old when my mom died I can tell you the most advice I received on that day of my mom’s funeral were adult men coming to me saying, “Now be a big boy; don’t cry.” And I can remember having to think as I’m about to look into my mom’s casket and turn and face, you know, maybe 500 people, and the only thing I could think about was, “Don’t cry’; don’t cry; be a big boy; don’t cry.” I remember that to this day!

And I could say that the way that has played forward into my life and my relationship, Jean sometimes will say to me, “Jim, it feels like you’re not connected there emotionally.” In essence, she’s saying to me, this would be a time when you should be cryin’. And you know, how does a couple battle through that and how can a wife continue to help her husband tap those feelings that maybe have closed off because of those childhood memories?

Mike: That’s a great question because I think what happens is, that women want to know what a man is feeling and sometimes they pressure that man with different questions and say, “What are you feeling about this? You must be feeling something.” And men don’t know what they’re feeling. But if a woman asks and gives him space and gives him time to actually think, he usually can come up with it, but he needs time to process because she’s asked him to do something that every man in his life has told him not to do over the years. And so, suddenly, he’s in a place where he wants to be able to do that, but it’s foreign to him.

Jim: Yeah, you talk on the uplifting side about a man’s desire to be his wife’s hero. Probably some women are going, “Well, I don’t see that many times (Laughing) during the day.” But what is in us as men to want to be that hero for our wives?

Mike: It’s part of our wiring. That’s why men watch action movies more than the romance movies. But even in that, they’re looking at a conqueror. They want to be the person who goes out and wins and comes back and they want their wife to be proud of them. They want to be a hero for their woman.

Jim: Yeah. How do we do —

Mike: And you …

Jim: –that in a modern culture though? I mean, we’re pretty limited on conquests. (Laughter)

Mike: Well, you know, it’s true because I think of when Captain Sully brought down the plane—

Jim: Well, that’s true.

Mike: –in the Hudson River a while back and everyone looked at him as a hero. And I think most men, maybe even subconsciously said, “I wish it was me that brought that plane down, because I want to be the hero.”

Jim: Or at least, you feel the respect that we have as a man—

Mike: Yeah.

Jim: –for what he did.

Mike: But Captain Sully didn’t get up that morning and think, “I think I’ll be a hero today.” It was an accidental heroism and I think most of us, we’re not gonna be the one that saves somebody from a burning building, but there’s something in us that wants to be able to be a hero. And so, we do it in our own sphere, in the smaller settings.

Jim: What’s the difference between that desire to be a hero and the typical male ego? Do you just want to be seen and known and be “the guy?”

Mike: I think they’re real similar. Maybe it’s just a different way of saying it. The house we moved into nine years ago, one of the first things we noticed was that the baseboards needed painting. And they had never been painted probably since the house was new. And so, we thought, okay, as soon as we move in, we need to paint those baseboards. Well, like everything else, as soon as you’ve lived there for a while, you get used to it. You don’t see it anymore. Nine years later they still weren’t painted. (Laughter) And one day I thought, you know what? I’m gonna go in there and just paint it. It won’t take me long and it’ll look really nice and she will be proud of me.

Jim: Same color?

Mike: Uh …

Jim: Close enough?

Mike: Close enough, yeah.

Jim: Okay, good, so that wasn’t the issue. 

Mike: Yeah, I (Laughter) … no, actually I think I did change the color, enough so that she would notice—

Jim: Okay.

Mike: –so that she would do that. And I expect her to come home and notice and tell me how great it was, because I wanted her praise. Men just want to be respected by their women. That’s what it means to be her hero.

She came home and I knew that she wouldn’t notice and I thought, I can sit around all day waiting for her to see something. And I thought, we need to be honest about this, so as soon as she walked in I said, “Hey, could you come in the bedroom for a couple minutes and ooh and aah about the baseboards I painted?” She said, “Yeah, give me three minutes; I’ll come in.” (Laughter) Three minutes later she came in and she went, just playfully, she goes, “Ooh! Aah!” And then she said, “You know what, it really looks different. You did a really good job in here. It makes the whole room look different. Thanks for doin’ that.”

Jim: Ah, that made it.

Mike: Yep, that’s all I needed. I was her hero, because I did something and I … in a sense, I had to ask for it, but we’re just bein’ honest. We brought it out there in a way that gave her some tools to use.

Jim: Did you feel that, John? I might—

John: I could feel it.

Jim: –say that? I felt that love.

John: I’m in respect of—

Jim: Isn’t that funny—

John: –that.

Jim: –how we’re wired like that?

Mike: It is.

Jim: That’s true, we just want respect and that kind of affirmation.

Mike: Yeah.

Jim: We’re still kind of little boys at heart, aren’t we? When you look at the male emotion and mind, so much of us are still the little boys back there, looking for mom’s affection and mom’s affirmation of us in so many ways.

Mike: Oh, yeah. I think it goes back to what we talked about earlier, that little boys want to be known. They want to be respected. They want to be loved. They’re on a playground; they go, “Mommy, watch! Daddy, watch! Come swing me, spend time with me, be with me.”

And you know what? You got somebody who’s 40-years-old, it’s really not that different. They may not say, you know, “Come watch; mommy watch,” “Wife, watch.” But they’re wanting to be observed. They want to be loved. They want to be respected. They want to be known.

Jim: Oh, we’re still sayin’ it; just maybe in a little more sophisticated ways.

Mike: Right.

Jim: Isn’t that so true? 

Jim: Mike Bechtle, author of the book, I Wish He Had Come with Instructions: The Woman’s Guide to a Man’s Brain, I love that. I wish I would’ve taken that title. That’s a great title, but we are grateful that you’ve been with us.

John: And you can get your copy of I Wish He Had Come with Instructions when you stop by focusonthefamily.com/radio or give us a call, 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY; 800-232-6459. …

Jim: Well, and the bottom line is, if you have struggled to understand your man, this is a great resource and I hope you’ll pick it up and we’ll make that available for a gift of any amount. And we so appreciate your support of the ministry. You know, we’re able to help thousands, literally thousands of marriages every year because of your support to the ministry, so thank you for participating and also tuning up your own marriage in the process. So, we’re grateful for that and Mike, let me end with this last question. What’s something I could do as the one that didn’t come with instructions, to allow my wife to help me in a way that makes this job a little easier?

Mike: I think to have real conversations about the differences between us and to recognize that a woman is wired a certain way and that God wired them that way. And men are wired by God in a certain way.

When we try and fight those differences, it can really be frustrating. The thing that really draws us together is when we draw from the differences. It’s a synergistic approach that says, let’s take the best of who you are as a woman, the best of who I am as a man and let’s see if we can come up with something even stronger, because we’re drawing from ingredients from both sides.

Jim: I like that. So, as our wives are learning the language of male, we should be learning the language of female.

Mike: I think it’s learning the language of each other.

Jim: That’s right. 

Closing:

John: Well thanks for being with us Mike, and for our listeners, you can learn more about his book and how to get a CD or download of our conversation today. That information at www.focusonthefamily.com/radio, or call 800 the letter A and the word Family. You can also get our Focus on the Family broadcast app for your phone or your tablet and listen on the go.

Join our next time as Dr. Gary Chapman shares important advice for new parents: 

Teaser:

Dr. Gary Chapman: So, along the way we have to examine how do I simplify my life. What are some things that I maybe need to drop off for a while here while I’m raising a child?

End of Teaser

John: I’m John Fuller and on behalf of Focus president, Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for listening. We’ll invite you to join us then, again next time as we once again, help you and your family thrive.