Men need women’s help, but only with half of the things anyone is capable of recognizing, and only one quarter of things we are all capable of recognizing. Respectable men will not, under any circumstances, continue being around a woman who does not give them respect, even when they don’t deserve it. That is male DNA, how God made men: Those who want respect give respect first. We have to learn it because life doesn’t work for us until we do because we can’t function without respect. A woman who understands men half as much as she thinks does understand and agrees with this 100%.
Paul commanded men to love their women, but for women to respect their men, all because that was how God designed men. So, helping a man means respecting him until he’s respectable. Everyone, man or woman, who presumes to know “all” the needs a person has does not respect that person.
Respect begins with the heart-level belief that no one can fully understand another person. Anyone so capable of being fully understood by another human, even after a thousand years, is not worthy of respect, and certainly not worthy of relationship. Whether you are a man or woman, if you want a relationship without strife, stay away from any relationship until you understand this deeply and the person in the relationship does also.
Too many women live in misery because they thought they could change their husband or that there were things she could accept if he didn’t change himself. Thirty minutes at a bookstore could have taught her otherwise. Thirty minutes at a bookstore could have taught her husband that they weren’t ready yet for a relationship. Strife develops among people who believe that they don’t need to learn from others first, who do not seek to begin by learning the easy, obvious advice already widely available.
Respectable people, however, are teachable and expect their friends to be the same. Men need to be ready to work, to take out the garbage every day and buy flowers and diamonds on holidays, not the other way around. Women need to look for men who don’t need to be told that.