Jeff Feldhahn - For Young Men Only

From Jeff:
To Bill and Roberta Feldhahn,
who survived the raising of four boys
with their humor, sanity, and marriage intact.

From Eric:
To Paul and Melba Rice, married fifty-three years.
They laughed and loved to the fullest.

A Preface for Grownups Who Are Peeking In

To the grownups who are worriedly sneaking a peek (Mom, Dad, youth leaderyou know who you are): were glad youre peeking! As parents ourselves, we affirm you as the most important guardians of your teens, including where they get information and advice. And when it has to do with the opposite sex, we extra affirm your concern!

We wrote For Young Men Only for a teen you care abouta young man-in-the-making who spends hours wondering what girls are like, what they think, what they want. Too often he simply doesnt know, or else his answers come from all the wrong places. Our goal has been to deliver an eyeopening book that draws on solid research to help teen guys understand and honor the unique way girls are wired. Many adult readers of For Men Only and For Women Only (previous books in the series) have told us, I wish I had learned these truths before I got married. Thats why were confident this book can help your teen enjoy dramatically healthier and happier relationships in the future.

As you review the pages ahead, keep a few things in mind:

Weve taken some risks to present our findings in a way that meets guys right where they are. Some in our audience will be church kids and some wont. Regardless, we look at each issue from their perspective and felt needs first. Then we make sure they see and understand what theyve been missing or never knew.

This is a book about how girls think. Its not a dating advice book (although we recommend a few tips as we go along). What your teen reads here is intended to help him whether he is in a relationship or not. We assume that our reader at least has an interest in getting to know or understand girls, even just as friends. That natural interest is our starting point for showing him how he can support, honor, and protect girls, now and for the rest of his life.

Much of what is here will surprise your teenmaybe you, tooso we encourage you to use this book as a conversation starter. God has granted you influence in your teen boys life for a very good reason.

In a world that seems to conspire against families who care about honoring others in relationships, we pray youll find For Young Men Only just the resource youve been looking for!

Warmly,

Jeff & Shaunti Feldhahn and Eric & Lisa Rice

1

WHAT MOST GUYS NEVER KNOW

To find the truth, we take you to the ultimate sourcemore than one thousand of them

T here are so many reasons why you dont need this book. You dont need it to know how to text a girl in the middle of a roller-coaster ride. Or to build a computer on your bedroom floor. Or to belch the alphabet in tune, or kill a city full of zombies with just your thumbs, or sink your famous no-look jump shot.

All that you can already do.

And for all those reasons you are alreadylegend.

On the other hand, like most young males, you live among aliens who dont know or appreciate your achievements. The aliens, of course, are girls. Some of them, especially the cute ones, have the power to make you stutter, shake, and fall on your behind right when you want to look your coolest.

You know its true. Girls drive us crazy. They can turn a famous jump shot into nothing but air. They can make us so confused we want to scream.

So we have to ask, will youmale legendsurvive girls with your coolness intact?

Plenty of guys dont. We know. Well, at least I (Eric) know. When I was a teen, I drove all the way from Texas to Tennessee on a hot day just to hear a girl say, Bye, Eric. Very hot, very bad day.

All that stuff about stutter, shake, and fall down? That was me. Most of what I learned about girls was from urban legends or in locker rooms or by guesswork. And most of what I learned was dead wrong. Thats why we decided to write FYMO, which is code for For Young Men Only: A Guys Guide to the Alien Gender.

Now that were post-cool but also post-stuttering grownups, we want to help teen guys understand, talk to, listen to, get to know, learn from, care for, enjoymaybe even impress a girl. Sure, its not quite as lofty a goal as stopping terrorism or bringing back the glaciers. But its something smart guys care aboutand smart girls too. Understanding how girls think can make a huge difference in your happiness now and in the future. Even better, a crash course in Girl 101 can put you way ahead of most other guys, who will spend the rest of their lives being totally confused.

In the book youre holding, enlightenment starts with you. You bring your legendary genius. We bring our shocking data. Pretty soon you can get inside her head.

A crash course in Girl 101 can put you way ahead of most other guys.

No Way!

Yes, FYMO takes you inside a teen girls head (scary but fascinating, you have to admit). We help you accomplish that feat by listening to hundreds of smart, likable girls who were willing to talk about themselvesand keep it honest. (And if you think we hunted down only boring, shallow, or unappealing girls for this project, jump to www.foryoungmenonly.com. Youll get a different picture.)

How are we able to deliver insights that will get you shouting No way! and change how you think forever?

Let me (Jeff) explain. Shaunti, my wife, just happens to be a Harvard-trained policy analyst who unexpectedly became a social researcher. One day she woke up to the fact that men really do think differently than women. (Okay, sometimes we dont think at all, but lets not go there.) Shaunti realized that even though she loved someone as smooth as me, she simply didnt get a lot about me. Not just didnt get. More like had no clue.

And heres the weirdest part: I had no clue that she had no clue.

When Shaunti asked around, she discovered that our problem was a common one. In fact, she talked to men and women from all over who had simply given up on thinking that you could understand someone of the opposite sex, even one you loved very much. That realization prompted her to launch a research project that asked men how they really felt about certain topics. Especially about some of the more hidden, difficult, and important aspects of being a man. Their answers led Shaunti to write For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men.

It became a national bestseller. Men everywhere breathed a sigh of relief because suddenly they werent treated like freaks. And women everywhere realized they could know and love their man for who he really was, not for who they thought he was. Were still amazed at how often just one new insight about the opposite sex can turn a light bulb on over our headsand turn a relationship completely around.