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Fair warning: This will include times where we’ve sensed insecurity and are trying to reassure her—and still get pushed away. Few things drive a guy crazy more than the sense of being tested or manipulated, and most of us soon give up in disgust. I can’t tell you how many times when facing resistance I’ve thought,
Fine, suit yourself. I’ve got to go cut the lawn anyway.
And then I pretty much put the incident out of my mind. Unfortunately, she can’t.

She’s still seeking the answer to the original question: “Do you still love me?”
^*2

My advice is, if you’re speechless with frustration at that point, you’re still in the game. Forget giving speeches and simply reach for her.

If you’re speechless with frustration at that point, forget giving speeches and simply reach for her.

Part 2. Persistent Pursuit

Now we come to an even more valuable tool for a man who wants to show his wife that he still means his “I do”: pursuit. It’s even better than saying those reassuring words once she’s already feeling insecure. Pursuit is action—it’s what you did when you first saw her and wanted to make her yours. It
prevents
a lot of her insecurity. It fills up her emotional bank account. And pursuit is what she still deeply desires and needs in her marriage, even if us “close the deal” kind of guys are already on to the next big deal—completing our education, launching a career, raising kids, perfecting our golf swing…

All worthy goals, mind you. But they tend to make us forget that the pursuit of her that we thought was completed really isn’t.

Pursuit
prevents
a lot of her insecurity.

One woman we interviewed recounted a common story line that captures the dilemma perfectly:

I know a woman who was divorced for quite a few years, but then this new guy started pursuing her. At first she was cautious—she was fine on her own and didn’t think he was her “type.” But he just
wooed
her—there’s no other way of putting it. He was very attentive, and made it clear that he thought she was something special and that he wouldn’t be dissuaded that easily. He sent her flowers all the time, which is one of her “things,” and dropped her little notes, and it just made her feel so special. As he pursued her steadily like that for several years, she saw all his terrific qualities and fell hard in love. They got married—and almost immediately she began to think that something was wrong. All those little things that said “I love you” to her—well, he stopped doing them! No more flowers or notes or pursuing. It seemed to her like once they got married, he suddenly stopped caring about her. And now, he doesn’t understand why she’s upset. He just says, “Of
course
I love you, honey!” And then goes on about his day. Meantime, he doesn’t realize that his wife is getting seriously, seriously depressed.

Of course, you and I can identify with this story from the guy’s side. It’s common for men to think that pursuing goes with dating, not with marriage. But women don’t see things that way. There is never that magic moment of closure, when they feel permanently, fully, deeply loved.
They think that’s what the rest of married life is for!
That’s why they need and deserve to be pursued every day.

In fact, several women compared the need to feel pursued by their husbands with the need that a man has to feel sexually desired by his wife! If it’s that important, what is a smart married man to do?

Big-screen answer: Give chase.

Pixel answer: Ask yourself,
What did I do when I was dating that made me so pickin’ irresistible?

Ask yourself,
What did I do when I was dating that made me so pickin’ irresistible?

Probably you spent hours just hanging out together. You listened. You flirted. You sent little e-mails during the day just to say hi. You shared dreams.

You said things like:

“We’re so good together.”

“I can’t imagine life without you.”

“I’m so glad God brought us together.”

“I love you so much it hurts…”

You proved to her, in other words, that you were smitten.

Want a portrait of pursuit in marriage? You and I should consider that we might already be masters of it. Now that we know the chase isn’t over, we just need to remember to do what came so naturally before.

“You didn’t come after me.”

Maybe you remember the 1998 remake of the old Disney movie
The Parent Trap
, starring Dennis Quaid, Natasha Richardson, and then-twelve-year-old Lindsay Lohan. Our young daughter loves this movie, and we were watching it for the twentieth time one night when Shaunti pointed out a perfect illustration for this book. In the movie, two preteen girls realize they are twins, separated at birth when their parents divorced—so they plot to get them back together by switching places. The British mom and American dad still care about each other, and when they finally meet again, Nick asks his ex-wife, Elizabeth, about what happened between them.

Nick:
It ended so fast….So…about the day you packed…. Why did you do it?

Elizabeth:
Nick, we were so young, and we each had tempers. We each said foolish things. So I packed, got on my first 747 and…you didn’t come after me.

(Dead silence.)

Nick:
I didn’t know I was supposed to.

Elizabeth:
(Smiling bravely) Well, it really doesn’t matter now…. So let’s just put on a good face for the girls, shall we, and get this show on the road.

Shaunti said this was an example of where the woman really
wanted
him to come after her.

I asked, “But why didn’t she just
tell
him that she wanted him to stop her from leaving? Why play games and make him read her mind?”

She looked at me, totally astonished. “Because if she said, ‘Come after me,’ it wouldn’t
mean
anything! It would be her decision, not his. She’d always doubt whether he did it on his own or because she asked him and guilted him into it.”

Oh. Now I get it.

The movie, by the way, ends well. Nick finally realizes that in spite of Elizabeth’s seeming to push him away, she wanted him to follow. And so he does. Because he learns to pursue, learns to reassure, the family is reunited.

Chances are, your wife or girlfriend is carrying around an unseen uncertainty about your love and needs you to come after her, too, look her in the eye, and tell her that you love her…and you’re not going to let her get away.

Women deal with multiple thoughts and emotions from their past and present all the time, at the same time—and these can’t be easily dismissed.

O
ne day early on in our research, my kids and I dropped by the home of some close friends, Alec and Susie. While our children went outside to play, Alec asked me what I’d been learning about the mysterious other gender. I tried to describe a growing realization: The female brain is not a normal instrument.

Normal, Alec and I agreed, would mean “male.” Instead, I described what many women had told me: that their thought lives were almost like busy computers with multiple windows open and running all at once, unwanted pop-ups intruding all the time, and little ability to close out or ignore any of that mental or emotional activity until a more convenient time.

My friend shook his head in amazement. Strange, we both agreed. Very strange.

Their thought lives are almost like busy computers with multiple windows open and running all at once.

Susie, sitting at her computer nearby, had been listening, much amused, to the male sleuths at work in her kitchen. So my friend and I decided to test my working conclusions on the spot. “Okay, hon,” said Alec, “so what is in your brain
right now
?”

She looked up. “Right now? Well, let’s see.” She started ticking things off on her fingers. “I’m thinking about all the points I want to make in this article I’m writing. I’m thinking I need to check the pizza in the oven pretty soon. I’m hoping the kids are doing okay out on the trampoline and thinking I should go check on them. I’m wondering whether we’re going to hear back tonight on this business deal we’re waiting on and thinking about what I can say to move things forward.” She hesitated a moment, then looked up at Alec. “And if you really want to know, I keep worrying about the argument you and I had this morning, and whether you’re still upset.”

We looked stunned. “There’s probably more,” she said. “You want me to keep going?”

Alec verbalized what any guy would be wondering: “How do you get anything done with all that stuff in your head?” And more to the point, “Why don’t you just turn off all the other thoughts so you can concentrate?”

Susie looked perplexed. “Because I can’t,” she said. “And even if I did, they’d come back.”

After hearing this sort of thing dozens of times, I realized that how a woman multitasks her thoughts and feelings isn’t just an interesting academic difference between the sexes. It probably impacts how your wife or girlfriend relates to you every single day. That means a closer look at this mysterious mental difference is definitely in order.

This female multitasking of thoughts and feelings impacts how your wife or girlfriend relates to you every single day.

Her Mysterious Matrix

Picture this: You’re on your computer, moving between six or seven open screens on your desktop. Perhaps you’re juggling three or four Word documents, an Excel spreadsheet or two, and your home budgeting program. In addition, your e-mail program and Internet browser are running, and your computer is playing your favorite Webcast radio program. It’s a digital Grand Central Station.

Now add another dimension: Imagine that some of the open files and programs are actually weeks old and have been running there in the background the whole time. Even worse, your computer is infected with spyware that keeps causing annoying advertisements to pop up. You’ve tried to close these unwanted files and pop-ups many times. You’ve installed anti-spyware programs and rebooted your computer. But those pesky things just keep coming back. The best you can do is to minimize or ignore them so you can focus on the other half-dozen tasks you’re actively juggling at any one time…

Welcome to a woman’s mental and emotional world—a world that has probably affected yours more than you realize. Here’s what our surveys found:

• First, most women juggle multiple thoughts and feelings at the same time.

• Second, about half of all women have stored thoughts or feelings from the past that regularly pop up into active mode
whether they want them to or not
.

• Third, women seem consistently unable to close these windows as easily as men can.

Let’s look more carefully at what each of these statements means, how this affects you, and how to make the most of the mysterious but wonderful way she’s wired.

Women seem consistently unable to close these windows as easily as men can.

Of course, to make any progress on this discussion, we’ll have to switch to male-pattern processing. That would mean, for example, taking one thing at a time.

There’s Lots Goin’ On in There

Take multitasking: I’ve suggested that like a computer running multiple tasks, my wife will tend to have many different thoughts and feelings all running in her brain at the same time. Where I would tend to process thoughts and feelings sequentially—working on one screen at a time, closing it, and moving on to the next—Shaunti is likely to have many screens open simultaneously and is able to jump back and forth between them at will. Or against her will.

In fact, on the survey nearly eight of ten women described themselves in very similar ways. Agreement became almost universal (in the 90–95 percent range) for women under forty-five and those with middle-school or younger children at home.

Which scenario best describes how you experience thoughts and emotions? [Choose One Answer]

This may perplex us, but think how the unique properties of the female brain prepare her in so many ways for success. Think, for example, of how you’ve watched in amazement as your wife or mom managed an onslaught of cranky kids, made dinner, talked on the phone to a colleague, and let the cat out…all at the same time. Think of how your wife or girlfriend’s brain has nurtured countless relationships or deftly managed the web of commitments in an extended family while holding down a job. You get the idea.

Most men are very different. Early in our marriage, if Shaunti found me sitting by myself, she’d ask me what I was thinking. When I answered “nothing,” she’d get irritated and press me to
please
tell her what I was thinking. She didn’t understand that I really was thinking…nothing! My desktop was empty, a screen saver was up, and no one was home.

Do you relate? Women don’t. As one woman put it: “There’s never a time that there’s nothing going on in my head. If I answer ‘nothing,’ it’s because I’m mad at him!”

“There’s never a time that there’s nothing going on in my head.”

This female matrix of multiple emotions and thoughts—all running at the same time—helps to explain some perplexing things, including:

•
Why women jump topics in the middle of conversation
. When this happens, we might think: a) she’s going off on a tangent, b) she’s muddled, c) she’s not paying attention, d) she’s not being respectful, or e) all of the above. But then we only have one window open, so we’re only having one conversation. Turns out she’s already deep into, oh, five or six at the same time! We just didn’t know it.

•
Why your wife or girlfriend, by comparison, often has so much more than you to talk about at the end of the day.
Now you know—even at the end of a very busy day, you’ve only been busy running down
one
track! But not her.

Invasion of the Pop-Ups

Not only do women have multiple thoughts running at once, about half regularly experience uninvited thoughts or feelings—from the present or the past—that pop up and interrupt their day. For the men who live with them, that means that they often interrupt ours, too!

More than a man, a woman will be regularly hit by unresolved emotional issues or hurts from a conversation or concern from last night, last month, or ten years ago. To the man in her life, it might seem that her past keeps crowding into her present, that she’s choosing to dwell on something that’s better left alone, or that she’s choosing to irrationally rehash or return to a matter that he thought was closed. But for her it’s not irrational—in fact, if this is the way she’s wired, it would be irrational for her
not
to address something that has circled back around.

According to our national survey, about half of all women are interrupted by these pop-up thoughts or feelings multiple times a week, even multiple times a day. Among younger women and those with children at home, the proportion again was higher—at between 55–60 percent of survey takers. Perhaps not surprisingly, the percentage rose as high as 80 percent among women who described their relationship as shaky and those in difficult financial straits.

Some women say that emotions from experiences in the recent or even distant past (particularly negative ones) sometimes rise up in their minds. These may be triggered, or may seem to arise from nowhere. How often do you experience this? [Choose One Answer]

It’s not that women are helpless victims of these mental and emotional intruders. They’re just more likely to have them, and to have difficulty getting rid of them, than men. One woman in a focus group put it this way: “A lot of women will say, ‘Don’t play that tape in your head. You have to stop. Stop, don’t go there with that thought.’ It’s easier said than done, but at least we try.”