Kevin Leman - Making Sense of the Men in Your Life: What Makes Them Tick, What Ticks You Off, and How to Live in Harmony

Making Sense of the
Men in Your Life

What Makes Them Tick,
What Ticks You Off,
and How to Live in Harmony

Dr. Kevin Leman

Copyright 2000 by Dr. Kevin Leman

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations for critical reviews and articles.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Scripture quotations are from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.

Some names of persons used in this book are fictionalized to protect the privacy of the individuals.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Date

Leman, Kevin.
Making sense of the men in your life : what makes them tick, what ticks you off, and how to live in harmony / Kevin Leman.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8407-3494-8 (hc)
1. MenPsychology. 2. Sex differences (Psychology). 3. Man-woman relationships. 4. Man-woman relationshipsReligious aspectsChristianity.
I. Title.

HQ1090 .L46 2001
305.31dc21

00-046538
CIP

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 BVG 06 05 04 03 02 01

To my son, Kevin Anderson Leman II

You are the best son, and you'll be a great husband and dad

someday. God has given you such a wonderfully creative

and delightful sense of humor. May you always use your talent

and imagination wisely to help and encourage others.

As Dorothy Gish said, "Son... you've got it!"

I love you very much.

Your dad

Books by Dr. Kevin Leman

Among Dr. Leman's twenty-two titles are the following books:

Bringing Up Kids Without Tearing Them Down

Living in a Stepfamily Without Getting Stepped On

Unlocking the Secrets of Your Childhood Memories

What a Difference a Daddy Makes

Contents

1
What Is It About Men?

A re you willing to take a test to find out just how much you know (or don't know) about males (boys and men)? Get out your pen and see if you can correctly answer the following:

What is the most important need in a married man's life?

a. Sex

b. Admiration

c. Food

d. The remote control

e. Golf

f. Watching sports on television

g. Money

h. None of the above

[Letter h is the right answer. See Chapter 10.]

Your husband is hopelessly lost on a trip. He refuses to stop and ask for directions because

a. It's beneath him to ask.

b. It goes against his stubborn nature.

c. He's too proud to acknowledge he's lost.

d. He loves the challenge of figuring it out.

e. It's a macho thing.

f. None of the above.

[Hint: "None of the above" is the right answer again! See Chapter

12 for the right one.]

More than 80 percent of Christian women will violate their marriage vows in the coming week. True or false? [The correct answer is "true," but how? See Chapter 12.]

What is the most important thing a female employee wears in the workplace? [See Chapter 13.]

What do 96 percent of boys do that most mothers don't want to know about? [See Chapter 3.]

How often do you think a man thinks about sex?

a. The same amount as a woman

b. Twice as much as a woman

c. Five times as much as a woman

d. Ten times as much as a woman

e. Thirty-three times as much as a woman

[See Chapter 9.]

What do you need to do before your dad dies? [See Chapter 6.]

Why did you marry the man you married? [See Chapter 4.]

In this book, I'm going to break down the doors and throw open the windows to give you an up-close and personal look at how the "other half " thinks, feels, and behaves. For instance, when your husband wakes up in the morning, what's really going on in his mind? When your son closes the door of his bedroom in the afternoon, what's he doing? When your father looks at you as an adult woman/ daughter, what conflicting emotions is he experiencing? When your male boss or subordinate finds out how competent you are, what's he likely to do?

You may not like everything you read in this book, but you'd better pay attention to it. Your ability to succeed in the workplace, for instance, will require you to learn how to get along with meneven if all of them don't respect you. Your ability to succeed in marriage will depend in large part upon your understanding of what makes a husband feel fulfilled. And your skill as a mother will require that you learn to appreciate what makes a boy a boy.

Without this knowledge, how are you ever going to beat the odds? Let's take marriage as an example. Does it scare you at all when I ask, "How will you stay married when so many women get divorced?" What makes you so different from the tens of thousands of other sincere, loving women who get married, fully intending that they will die married, only to suffer the heart-wrenching breakup of a marriage that dies long before they do?

Don't think that you're immune to the possibility of divorce just because you're a Christian. Perhaps you didn't realize that Christians are more likely to experience divorce than non-Christians. That's right. According to research conducted by the Barna organization, while about 24 percent of American adults have experienced at least one divorce, 27 percent of self-described born-again Christians are currently or have previously been divorced. Barna noted, "Because of the large sample size involved, that difference is statistically significant."

Barna discovered that educational achievement, household income, and political ideology are unrelated to divorce. Far more dangerous, maritally speaking (at least, according to the statistics), is being a "nondenominational Protestant"; a whopping 34 percent of them have experienced divorce. In fact, Barna reported that atheists and agnostics fare much better in marriage than do Baptistssuffering a 21 percent divorce rate versus a 29 percent divorce rate, respectively.

What's so different about you? How are you going to be different and keep your marriage together? How do I know you won't end up in my office desperately trying to hold your marriage together after an affair? You may answer, "You don't understand, Dr. Leman. My husband and I are deeply, deeply in love. We'd never get a divorce." Here is my response: "Do you think a man and a woman begin their romance by saying, 'I'll have my lawyer contact your lawyer'? A man and a woman walk down the aisle for a marriage ceremony after declaring their deep, deep love for each other."

Do you want to die married? If you do, are you willing to invest the time it will take to read this book and learn what's really going on in your husband's mind?

Here's the first insider's secret of this book: One of the best things you can do to give your marriage longevity is to learn more about how a man thinks and feels. A man likes a woman who knows how a man thinks and feels. A man feels much more at home with such a woman. He'll be more relaxed and probably much better at growing in his understanding of what she wants.

Leman's Law #1:

Men like women who know how a man thinks and feels.

I wish every wife in this country would read a letter that appeared in a column by Ann Landers. A woman wrote to Ann after having an affair with a coworker, signing her name "Smart Too Late."

"At first," Smart Too Late wrote, "it was just flirting, but before long, we knew we were in love. We finally decided to divorce our spouses and get married."