Interview with Paula Rinehart

WOF:
Welcome to the Women of Faith Book Club! Tell us a little about yourself. What do you do when you’re not writing books?

PAULA:
I have a much more multi-varied life than I ever expected to have at this point in my life. I do two days a week of counseling in a counseling practice. I do speaking, mostly related to the books I’ve written. Then I keep up with three grandchildren and two aging mothers. I didn’t expect my fifties to be so intense—that was not my picture! But that is the way it is. I’m finding that writing is a great antidote to the rest of it.

WOF:
The subtitle of your book is “How to be a Relational Genius with the Man in Your Life.” Seriously. Is that even possible?

PAULA:
Well, there are some real qualifiers on that in the book. I’m hoping this book will get you a little closer to being a relational genius. I think the paradox of it all is that the women who—at least from where I sit—have the best relationships with men throughout their lives are women who maintain a natural sense of curiosity and wonder; they always see themselves on a learning curve. They appreciate that there is something really different in this, so to speak, “other” gender. If you let yourself kind of wonder as you wander and explore and walk around those differences, you discover the keys that make relationships work better. The paradox to me is one becomes a little bit more of a relational genius by holding on to that sense of wonder and being an avid learner.

WOF:
Did something happen that prompted you to write this book, or did it just grow out of the basic curiosity we women have about men?

PAULA:
The truth is I had a wonderful relationship with my father—he was just an extraordinary man; a very relational man. He had an early tragedy in his life and as he aged, he self-destructed in the last ten years of his life. That put me on the path to appreciate how men experience life, what happens in their heads and their hearts... the chapter titles are “Why Men Hurt” and “How Men Change.” I have grown in understanding because that tragedy in my father’s life really made me begin to ask a lot of questions.

As I explored—I’m married to a man who would tell me the truth about how he sees things; men began to tell me their stories in counseling situations—I just kind of grew in my own sense of “Oh, wow! That’s really the way you see it? That’s the way you experience it?” From there I began to read all the men’s books; they intrigued me more than the women’s books. [Now] I feel so much more comfortable around men. It’s like, Oh, this is what’s happening behind that bravado, behind that cool exterior. I began to relax and enjoy men.

WOF:
Love the line “Men aren’t women with big feet and beards. They are completely other.” Could you expound on that a little?

PAULA:
That kind of statement grows out of my own inner awareness and observations. Most of us women spend about half our life expecting a man to respond to something like we would. And from my own standpoint, feeling like maybe this man is a little deficient because he doesn’t. I'm really trying to jar a woman loose from that, because the longer we hold to that the more disappointed we are. Because they really aren’t another woman. They’re really not us.

One of the most startling scientific pieces I uncovered with this book was the statement that men and women differ in their genetic DNA only by 2% BUT that percentage is bigger than the difference between people and chimpanzees. Those kind of things jarred me loose.

WOF:
How can we have what you call “right-sized expectations” of the men in our lives?

PAULA:
One of the points I make in this book is that we can’t start the answer to that question culturally. There are so few influences now in our culture that really develop men to be men. We get totally off if we start there.

When I try to help a woman with what to expect from a man I think it’s unusually helpful to start with what God expects from a man. There are a lot of hidden clues to that: some of them in Genesis relate to circumcision, the fact that there is the mark of God’s covenant with this man and his sexuality from the very beginning. Adam is really charged with responsibility there in the very beginning.

Another place in Scripture that is instructive is in the book of Job. Job is at his lowest point; he’s lost everything. You would think God would be all comfort and sweetness to him. God said, “Stand up and talk to me like a man.” Meaning, who you are as a man is so intrinsic; it’s so imbedded in you that you can lose everything in your life but you can’t lose that. All those pieces—and ten more I could mention—are God’s way of saying, “There is really something to be had in this man, even when he does not know it.”

That’s a place where I start. I think if we start there, we actually end up expecting more from a man than people who don’t start there expect, but we also have to be able to ride out the disappointing moments when a man does not make choices in line with the way God has equipped him. I think a lot of women live with very little expectation of the men in their lives so they won’t be disappointed. That backfires, because unfortunately people live up to what you expect. If you ask for very little from a man generally very little is what you get. So that’s not helpful; better to learn to deal with some disappointment.

A man longs for a women to believe and see into him what he has to give. She often has more insight into that than he himself does.

WOF:
You devote a whole chapter to “respect” calling it “the holy grail men search for all their lives.” Why is respect so important to men—and how can we show it?

PAULA:
I sweated blood on that chapter. It’s a bit of a mystery to me, as much as I’ve read, talked, and written, there is mystery how respect could be the holy grail to a man. Why do his eyes light up at the word? Why does any form of it seem to reach something on the inside of him? It’s a mystery; it’s really not that way for women.

The most common form of respect is a man feeling like a woman is really on his team; that she sees the best in him and believes that of him. I tried to write about less common forms of respect; that has been enlightening for me. I am a pretty capable woman. If I let myself become aware of needing a man—needing my husband, needing what my brother brings to the picture, needing the words my son says to me—as I become aware of needing him, that is a form of respect. I am recognizing that what he brings to the picture as a man I cannot duplicate, no matter how capable I am.

Another form of respect is being willing to say “no” in right places in a relationship. Being able to say simply “That won’t work for me. I know you have something more to offer. I know you’ve got strength you’re not bringing to the table.” Being willing to cause a small crisis is an uncommon form of respect. What it says to a man is you believe and see what he’s got in there even if he’s not bringing it forth in that moment.

I tried to approach respect because it is so central to a man and it’s so easy to trample on. I would be the first to say there are moments in every relationship with a man when offering respect is kind of an act of faith. When what he’s said or done, you’re not pleased with. To me, respect is saying, “I know there’s something more here. My disappointment tells me, ‘there’s something more here.’” Putting myself out there in some way, shape, or form to say, “Really. I know you’ve got more to bring than this.” Or “I believe better of you than that.”

I also write in this chapter about being willing to not just fill in the gaps for a man, but let something be painful, or be difficult, or be awkward. [Instead of] always playing the buffer role that we play so well as women—then a man never really has to deal with his life or fill in the gaps.

WOF:
There’s a little gem tucked in the end notes of the book, where you mention the difference between asking a man “would you?” instead of “could you?” Tell us why that’s important.

PAULA:
“Could you” has a note of disrespect in it to a man. It implies that maybe he’s not capable. It strikes at the central question he carries around all the time: am I adequate? Am I man enough? But if I say, “Would you” I’m really saying, I totally believe you’re capable of this. I know you’re man enough. So would you be willing to... It’s kind of a mystery, really, how a man responds more to that than the other. Really, that’s one of the hidden pieces I’ve found to getting more support from a man, when a woman feels like she just can’t get the support she wants from a man. First of all we have to be a little bit more direct, but there is something in the difference of the words “would” and “could.”

WOF:
Does that hold true for women as well or is the opposite more effective?

PAULA:
You know, I had not thought of it in an inverse way. Off the top of my head, if another woman said to me, “Could you do such-and-such” I would hear in that a little bit more of a note of empathy. Like, “Given all the things you are juggling in life, do you think you could manage this, too?” It would feel to me like she was being considerate and empathetic. I would never take it in terms of “Oh gosh, am I able? Can I? Am I adequate?”

That has been a huge piece to me in the world of relating to men: letting myself realize they are always, always asking the question of adequacy in the back of their brain. You can put them in any setting—in a bedroom, in a boardroom, on an athletic field, in a church meeting, in a private conversation—and that question is just hanging back there in their psyche in ways that shape so many things.

WOF:
How has writing the book changed your own relationships with the men in your life?

PAULA:
Here’s the biggest way it’s changed my life: It has made me far more empathetic with men and it has made me willing to receive care and concern and love from a man in the way a man gives it. That might be sexually, it might be something a man does for me... Like every woman I am wired to look for words and empathy. I think I’ve spent half my life trying to squeeze words and empathy out of the men in my life. Sometimes they can provide it and sometimes they can’t, but in the course of things I think I have missed a lot of love as men show it—and discounted it, because it wasn’t in the form I was looking for it. I looked at it too much as deficiency rather than difference.

WOF:
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?

PAULA:
There’s so much value to really looking at the difference in gender. God has gone to a lot of trouble to create two distinct genders because it takes two genders to reflect even a peek at the awesomeness of who He is and what He’s like. The more I come to understand men—the other gender—the more it leaves me with a sense of awe. God seems bigger.