What Do You See in a Man?

Am I seeing my man as he is, or as I WANT to see him? 

Recently, my husband and I watched the 2004 Catherine Zeta-Jones and Tom Hanks movie “The Terminal,” about a man (Hanks) who gets stuck in New York City’s JFK airport when his home country undergoes a revolution. He becomes unable to go home and also unable to go out into America. The movie follows Hanks as he spends the better part of a year in the International Transit terminal, encountering folks from all walks of life in the process.

Zeta-Jones is a beautiful airline attendant who is gracious and grateful to Hanks after he rescues her broken high heel, but is romantically entangled with a married man. As the movie progresses, the viewers observe Zeta-Jones and Hanks’ friendship, one that never quite becomes romantic despite Hanks’ good heart and high hopes, because Zeta-Jones is ultimately unwilling to let the married man go, choosing instead, as she phrases it, to continue “ingesting these poisonous men until I make myself sick.” 

It's a slippery slope many women fall into.

Perhaps her most emotionally aware quote in the film comes when Hanks sets up a romantic candlelit dinner. As they talk, she notes “I always see men the way I want to see them,” shortly before leaving the meal to meet the married man when he contacts her. 

Zeta-Jones’ moment of introspection echoes the first verse from country singer Maren Morris’ hit “Rich,” in which she sings “If I had a dollar every time that I swore you off/And a twenty every time that I picked up when you called/ And a crisp new Benjamin for when you’re here then gone again/ And a dollar every time I was right about you after all” before launching into the chorus “Boy I’d be rich/head to toe Prada/Benz in the driveway, yacht in the water.” Later on, sounding strikingly similar to Zeta-Jones’ “poisonous men” comment, she laments, “Told myself I wouldn’t do this again/ But how much you wanna bet I’mma do this again?”

Both Zeta-Jones and Morris are referring to repeatedly getting involved with men who are not healthy for them.

And both women unequivocally suffer the painful emotional consequences of those decisions. 

But there’s a lesson tucked in there, too, for women who date good men—a tendency toward using men for emotional gratification, which could be viewed as the flip side to men’s tendency to use women for physical gratification. Though she can’t verbalize it and likely doesn’t even know it, Zeta-Jones is not just allowing the married man to physically use her. She’s also using him for the emotional gratification of being wanted by someone, of being with someone rather than alone.

When she says, “I always see men the way that I want to see them,” she’s not just commenting that she routinely ends up with ‘bad boys’ because she fails to see or ignores their flaws. She’s also saying that she projects something of her own desires, wounds, and self onto them, preventing her from seeing them as they really are, as themselves. 

“Let us make man in our image….”

Over the course of my husband’s and my relationship thus far, I’ve been learning to appreciate the words of Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” My husband is made in God’s image, not my own. What might it look like to respect and honor his creation in God’s image rather than my image of how he should be or act? 

He didn’t grow up in my family!

When James first flew across the country to meet me, he disembarked from the plane looking a little green. But rather than seeing him for the airsick, slightly dazed man he was, I saw instead his lack of compliments on the positive results of my considerable hair and makeup efforts. Half an hour later, when I introduced him to my parents, six siblings, dog, and bird, I didn’t see that he was still sick and now also overwhelmed. I instead saw him failing to engage with my attentive family, clueless as to what coming into our loud, boisterous clan might feel like to someone who tended towards introspection or just, again, was feeling sick.

Gradually, I understood that the differences between us that first intrigued me and drew me towards James, including the many ways that his growing up and mine, or even just his mannerisms and mine, diverge, are just that: differences, not problems.

"If he really loved me, he would…."

I’ve always understood that it’s no good to “missionary date;” that is, to date someone with the intent to “fix", ”save,” or otherwise majorly change them. I’ve had to learn, though, how to communicate well with my husband when I am hoping for a change in his behavior and to distinguish whether I’m asking something valid of him versus asking him to adhere to an idealized image I hold. 

When we were dating, we learned that we were on the same page about all of our core values. But there’s so much more that makes up living well together day-to-day. When some habit or behavior of his (leaving a trail of open kitchen cabinet drawers behind him comes to mind :) ) makes me feel frustrated or annoyed, I’ve learned that it’s no good to a) scold him like a child b) passive-aggressively hint at his “problem” until he gets the picture and hopefully changes/stops, or c) ignore the annoying habit, continuing to silently fume and build steam.

What does work is telling him calmly what the issue is, how it’s affecting me, and, if it’s not obvious, how I’m hoping he’ll choose to change. “Hey, babe, when you leave a bunch of kitchen cabinet doors open when you’re making breakfast, it feels like you think I’m your mom and am going to go around closing all of them after you.” 

He isn’t my savior.

My husband is a good, good man. I knew that virtually from the beginning—it was clear from his profile in how he spent his time and what his priorities were, and then it was clear from the way he treated me. Furthermore, the graces of sacramental marriage are real. The ways in which my husband has been able to enter into my emotional life and provide keen insights on wounds I carry from the past really is the result of grace.

At the same time, he is neither my savior nor my therapist. His plentiful and generous comments on everything from my outfit to my cooking fall on deaf ears or fail to “fill me up” if I am looking to him for my self-worth.

He will never be able to say enough of the right things to “satisfy me”. Instead, my self-worth has to come from God. When I have a proper perspective on who I am and whose I am (God’s beloved daughter), I’m more able to receive the affirmation of my husband. We are both most fulfilled when I see and appreciate him as he is, rather than using him to satisfy an unmet emotional need of my own.