The Importance of Reciprocity: Men Need To Feel Pursued Too

Boys are allowed to cry, we know teens need connection, but what happens regarding men as they get older? Here’s why men need to feel pursued too.

I’ve had this particular post sitting on the backburner for the last month or so and have revisited it several times but only now finally getting through to putting down exactly something that I’ve been thinking about. It’s been something I’ve been frequently thinking about and seeing time and again in recent news and personal stories, and as is very common in my blog posts, it’s those comment sections under relationship targeted Reels and memes that really get me thinking.

In my professional life I always say memes build teams, but I continually find in your personal life, they’re really great at triggering conversations and thoughts that are necessary and important. Well, if you don’t die in the ensuing flame war when everyone’s getting triggered by a generalisation about marriage.

It’s the struggle of how to have a successful lifelong loving relationship with the man in your life. For myself as a cis married man, my own personal stake would be making sure I enjoy my own love life as well. I mean, what person in existence has ever entered into a loving relationship, or attempted to find one, in order for their life to get worse? No one intentionally, unless you have a propensity to self sabotage due to an attempt to recreate an absuive or dysfunctional past because it’s all you’ve ever known, ala Stockholm Syndrome. But, that’s for another post.

As a man, I feel like men are pretty simple. But as it turns out, we aren’t really in practice. Or perhaps it’s just that we’re not that well understood.

This is quite interesting to me. As a parent of young kids, I’ve done a lot of reading about what we know about how children’s minds work and about parenting strategies that work based on our 21st century levels of understanding of the brain. For children, it is pretty widely accepted and put forward that it is super important that children are allowed to feel their emotions. Sharman’s 2019 study pretty conclusively observed that even across all cultures, even those that are more “traditional” or perhaps patriarchical and having high expectations of male children, boys have an equivalent need to girls in their need to cry and feel heard and valued.

Dr Justin Coulson is also continually reiterating this to a Western audience that toxic masculinity thrives in an environment where boys are not allowed to feel or feel loved. He then carries on into the realm of the teenage boy, where their need of value and connection is just as valuable to their development as it is when they’re young. I have read multiple other authors who continue to echo this sentiment, as I’m sure you have.

Okay, so for boys and male teenagers, we get it – they need to feel valued, they need to be able to feel, they need to have their emotions validated in order to feel connected and to grow in a healthy fashion. Aren’t we a progressive and forward thinking society that is working super hard to improve the lives of men recovering from the mindsets of previous generations to essentially squash what males under 18 felt? Good on us.

So, what happens? This young boy who we validate, this teen guy we’re trying to connect with, he turns 18. Or 20. Or 30. Or 32. Or 45. And whichever age a potential suitor or lover is trying to find him, or date him, or marry him, or stay married to him, for some reason, we’ve decided that this is a trait of men that suddenly changes.

And why? Because he’s a grown man now and I have expectations and demands of him.

Boys can cry. Teenage males can have the need for connection. But it’s up to Mr Man to now always be the strong one, to be the one we can holistically depend on.

To be the one to pursue. And perhaps the only one who needs to.

I’ve observed something about dating if you’re around 30 or older – it’s that I think men have worked out their need for pursuit too. Or perhaps their tolerance levels for having all the expectations placed on them have created a jaded batch of single men who are going to need more skin in the game from their potential mate before they’re willing to make more of a move.

When we’re younger, there’s so much more pressure on us to be a real man and go first and be the one to initiate and always come up with 1000 romantic ideas for the first date or the weekend away or the anniversary trip or the birthday celebrations. But as men get older, whether intentionally or not, they seem to become more aware of their own need.

Now, this isn’t always a good thing. There’s plenty of Peter Pan Syndrome, I never want to grow up, you’ve got to baby me and by my mistress, mother, and maid fellas out there who are absolute poison in the dating pool, and even more of a toxic fume in their marriages. It is absolutely undeniable that Men Need Purpose, Direction, and Income. Without it, their love lives and children inherently suffer or their relationship dies a slow death.

I was also very recently shocked at a few horror stories of friends on dating apps who’ve had men cancel or go silent after agreed plans and then drop off the face of the earth. I just can’t believe that there are a seemingly increasing number of men in their 30s or older who think that it’s absolutely fine to lock it in and then not show up. Boo sir, booooooooooo. More on that in Ghosting Is The Worst Phenomenon In Modern Relationships

But all that said, if you find a man who’s got his life together, or relatively together, or you put a ring on it, or you’re trying to find someone, I would love to urge you with this truth – men need to feel pursued too.

Bishop TD Jakes absolutely nails this point in his excellent series and book He-Motions. He highlights that there’s a king in every kid, and a kid in every king. We’re really great at understanding the first part nowadays, but perhaps all those Peter Pans have made our society unsympathetic to the second reality – that despite the hair, the greys, the balding, the flaking, the biceps, the income, the promotion or the prominence, he still needs to feel valued at his core.

As a Christian myself, I perhaps see this idea dominate the faith based community more than not, although I’d be curious of your experience otherwise as well.

I think this has been somewhat exacerbated for church goers at any rate by a limited understanding of what the Bible says about pursuit and gender. Not that I think the Bible is limited in what it says – I think we are limited in our understanding.

We have pink and Colour-ful conferences, books, and seminars all enshrined to the need and desire of women to feel pursued and valued. Scripture tells us that women are the crown of creation and that they should be treated as precious as diamonds and importance, especially by their husbands. Husbands are even called out by the apostle Paul and told that if they hinder their wives, it’s likely their prayers are going to go unanswered. We should live as joint heirs in life. You know all the verses about what husbands are supposed to do by now probably.

And there are numerous examples of men pursuing women in Scripture, that is for sure true. And men and women in marriage are compared to Christ and the church, and we all know what Scripture tells us about what Christ did and does for the church.

But I do want to highlight to you – this is one part of a full and beautiful picture, if you can get it right.

Ruth and Rachel are two women who come to mind who ruin the “men should do all the initiating argument”. Everyone talks about finding their Boaz, but I wonder if you’re willing to pursue like Ruth did, or wait for an extended period like Rachel did. I know myself personally I was the initiater for our marriage, but if it stayed that way, we would have no hope of joy in our married life. Fortunately for me it hasn’t, but I have known many men who have felt continually overlooked, unseen, or unvalued whilst trying their best to make their wife feel the complete opposite.

What about the Song of Songs? What a passionate and beautiful example of what a glowing marriage should be. Cheeky, sexy, encouraging, endearing, cherishing. That’s what Solomon seemed to be like in the song towards his wife.

But that’s what the Shulamite was also like. Generous, encouraging, esteeming and respectful of the man she called husband and lover and friend.

And that’s why it works.

And I think perhaps the true Scripture hiding in plain sight that highlights to us what healthy and powerful relationship really looks like – the apostle James tells us if we draw near to God, He draws near to us.

Yes, God went first. Yes, God loved first. Yes, God is strong and capable and has it together. But even this tell us about God that there’s a drawing on our side required before the relationship can go any deeper.

I wonder if your dating life, your love live, your marriage, your sex life, your whatever dimension of your togetherness, is trapped because you haven’t recognised that men need to feel pursued too. That maybe if you draw near to him, he’ll draw closer to you again too.

I was intentional in picking that word needs. Sure, he wants it. And in truth, the most a man is ever really going to tell you is that he wants that from you. But the reality is – he needs it. Just like you, your man or future man is going to need to feel cherished, to feel believed in, to be romanced, to be celebrated, to be heard and understood.

Just like you. And he’ll die inside without it.

In a relationship, if it gets too lopsided towards one person or the other, you will always be out of balance, out of energy, out of time. But when you can find equilibrium where we both win, we both feel celebrated, we both have our needs met, then that’s a marriage of health, stability and strength.

Two practical thoughts on what this looks like. The first is that the loudest way to communicate love to a man is to believe in his dreams. Really believe in him. I’m with you, I’m here for it, I love seeing you in your element when you’re doing X (X means fill in the blank, not the new name for Twitter), I think it’s so great you want to do X Y Z with your life.

Like the little boy who glows with delight and strength when an older person believes in him, the heart of a grown man will still explode with joy and reassurance when the woman he loves does the same. Dr Emerson Eggerichs’ Love and Respect is full of heaps of examples (sometimes too many) of what this can look like if you’re struggling for ideas beyond the above, as well as further research to back up how much it really makes a difference to men. Another surprisingly good book on this topic is Sheet Music by Dr Kevin Leman – although overtly sexual in nature, it doesn’t shy away from this need and its non-sexual dimensions at a more basic level as well. Sex is usually the symptom or the manifestation of what’s happening with each other’s deeper needs after all.

Even if you’re not married to him, if you want to win a man over, paint an S on his chest by taking an interest on who he is, what he wants to do and be, and even moreso, why. And if you can be a woman who speaks into that person, you’re going to go a long way further than most other women out there in winning him over.

Nothing screams love louder to a man than respect and belief in his dreams.

Why do you think porn is so freaking successful and mainy to a male audience? Because it sells the idea that someone is interested in him without remorse, that he’s strong and desirable, that he ultimately matters. More in What Porn Teaches Us About Men. As an aside if you’re a man looking to get out of looking at porn, have a real think about why you keep going back there. I guarantee you it’s probably related to how you feel in this area.

The second thought is that there are some great resources out there for keeping the spark, the interest and the love alive in your marriage. The Gottman Institute has a lot of great resources and put forward that every single day, each person in a relationship is engaged in rituals of connection and relational bids. A relational bid is in its simplest form, one person reaching out for the other. And the research continually shows that reaching out and the need to be reached out to is not gendered.

The ways in which you could reach out to women are usually fairly well known or documented – romantic getaways, flowers, chocolates, presents that celebrate her heart, time away with the girls, you know the rest, and if not, she’s probably already given you a list of locations and gift ideas and things that’ll make her feel important. But there are just as many, sometimes the same, sometimes in different forms, in order to reach out to your man. The Gottman app Love Decks has heaps of fun, deep, funny, sexy, and intimate ideas or conversation points you can go through until you find one that clicks. As I wrote in You Missed The Main Point Of The Five Love Languages, everyone needs that relational love tank kept full in equal measure, and men are people too.

And if you’re struggling with even somewhere basic to start, as Barbara Streisand and Celine Dion put it – Tell him.

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If you’re reading this and fuming that I didn’t tell men more in this post to go after women, relax ladies, the post I wrote just before this was called The Best Thing You Can Give Your Wife And Kids. So, I’m on your side. But I’m also on his side.

And the truth is too many men have a need that they either haven’t put into words properly, or they haven’t ever seen fulfilled in their lives properly.

Being someone’s husband or being someone’s wife is a powerful privilege in that before God and your friends and family, you told everyone that you were going to be the person to champion them. Holistically. Emotionally. Sexually. Mentally. It’s a holy privilege that we should wake up to every day with a sovereign sense of respect and duty to fulfill, because if you don’t be that person for your spouse, there’s a strong chance no one else will.

Imagine if the man you loved never knew what it was like to feel respected, valued, and important in the eyes of another person at his most foundational level. That’s the power you wield in your hand and your heart.

Women absolutely need to feel pursued. But men need to feel pursued too. And the sooner we accept that need and responsibility, we can make our love lives a much better place.

How about you? Do you think men need to feel pursued too?