How to Avoid Divorce by Using Your Feminine Gifts

4 Ways Women Have More Power Than Men to Make Marriage Last

You were born to be cherished by a man.

At one time, you took that for granted.

You probably started fantasizing about it when you were little, dreaming about the moment you would finally meet, or kiss, or fall in love with and marry a cute boy.

You anticipated with great pleasure how much he would desire you, and how he would woo you.

You spoke to your friends and your sisters and your mom about the nature of boys, and marveled at how strange they are.

You delighted in romantic movies and books where the boy got the girl.

You obsessed. You developed crushes. They went nowhere. You agonized. You debated.

All of that was preparation for your job as Keeper of the Relationship.

Sure, you suffered disappointments and challenges in relationships, mostly because you didn’t know about your superpowers as a woman.

If your relationship isn’t all you dreamed it would be, this is the missing piece that you need to not just stop a divorce, but make your relationship worth saving.

How do women have more power than men in romantic relationships?

What are the gifts of the feminine, and how can you use them to create lasting love?

Glad you asked. I happen to have this list of 4 ways right here:

1. Women Have the Power to Receive Special Treatment

“Women who seek equality with men lack ambition.” –Marilyn Monroe

One big aspect of our gifts is receptivity, which is how willing you are to receive compliments, gifts and help.

It’s so subtle, you might not notice receptivity if you don’t know what to look for.

A receptive woman is inevitably a well-taken-care-of woman.

Her man takes every opportunity to do things he knows will please her.

He memorizes her favorite dessert, opens the door for her, puts gas in her car, tells her she’s beautiful and brings her flowers.

He also does the dishes, gives the baby a bath and works to support the family.

In return, she smiles and says thank you.

She is genuinely grateful. She doesn’t rebuff his offers so she can stay independent, nor does she criticize the way he bathes the baby.

That would be leaving her power by trying to control him, which would weaken them both. To stay in her power, she receives what he offers graciously.

Her man gets a lot out of it because he feels purposeful and successful at pleasing her. They both benefit from their interaction.

You probably enjoyed this kind of virtuous cycle during the early days of your relationship, when you were falling in love and you both felt amazing.

In the past, I might have observed such a woman and said something like, “She must be awfully good in bed to get that kind of treatment.”

But I was missing the whole point, which is that she was taken care of because she was willing to be taken care of.

That brings out a man’s natural desire to please his woman.

You have the same ability to inspire a man’s devotion, but you may not have been tapping into it.

Chances are, nobody ever gave you feminine training.

This is completely different from the assertiveness training we’ve received at work, where you instruct people to do what you want them to do.

That can never be as satisfying in a romance, because your man doesn’t want to feel like your employee.

And part of what we want is for our men to want to please us. Barking orders is no substitute for genuine romance.

Nothing causes the same butterflies of excitement as knowing that he is pursuing you because he finds you irresistible, and taking care of you because you inspire him.

Not that you need anyone to take care of you. You can always take care of yourself.

But it feels good to see a man who’s devoted to you making big and small gestures to delight you, just for the pleasure of seeing you happy.

I can be independent, but it’s even more gratifying to be interdependent.

That doesn’t make you weaker—quite the contrary. Having a man’s attention and help is fortifying.

2. Women Have More Power in the Bedroom

We women are the gatekeepers of sex from the very beginning of the relationship.

It’s up to the woman to say “not yet” or “not now,” because men usually need sex more than women do.

If your husband doesn’t seem that interested in sex lately, there’s an explanation for that here: How to Attract Your Husband in Bed.

Once a man is in an exclusive relationship, he’ll go a long way to make sure that his wife or girlfriend is not upset with him to avoid the unpleasant consequences of not being able to have sex.

That’s not his only motivation; his natural desire to please his woman is compounded by his desire to keep his one and only sex partner happy.

Keeping us happy, as you know, is not that easy to do.

For one thing, we are hormonal. And when we’re hormonal, we’re moody. And we’re hormonal a lot—every month, actually—and also when we’re pregnant, nearing menopause or experiencing menopause.

By comparison, men are a less emotional bunch.

Because they want us to be happy and they want to have sex with us, they do whatever they can to keep us calm even when our bodies are giving us reason to riot.

It’s not an easy task.

My husband has had the audacity to try to have sex with me right when I’m very busy and stressing out.

He’s right that it would help relieve stress to make love.

Whether we do or not is, of course, up to me, just like it’s always up to you.

That’s because we’ve got the power.

Whether they want to keep the sex coming or to please us, guys do things their women want them to do, even if they don’t want to do them.

And they don’t do things their women don’t want them to do, even though they want to.

And that explains why the tough-looking guy I saw at the mall with a shaved head and huge, tattooed arms was pushing a pink stroller and holding his wife’s purse in the bedding department.

Men are not only willing to sacrifice for their families, they see it as their purpose.

There are two more ways that you have enormous power to keep your marriage thriving and avoid divorce, no matter how lonely and broken it is now. Since this blog is getting pretty long, I’ll share them with you next week in part 2.

In the meantime, consider experimenting with your feminine gifts by receiving graciously and opening the gate to physical intimacy if it’s been closed.

3. Women Have More Power to Sustain Their Marriage for Life

Besides having the power to receive special treatment (#1) and being the gatekeepers for sex (#2), women as a gender also have more power when it comes to long-lasting matrimony.

Here’s why: men rarely initiate divorce—it’s largely women who take that step.

Some statistics have the number of divorces initiated by women as high as 91%.

That number resonates with me when I reflect on all the women my coaches and I have worked with who report that as soon as they got some relationship skills and starting using them in their marriages, their romances completely transformed in a very positive way.

These women reported lasting, amazing, magical results in their marriages just from changing their own behavior.

It stands to reason that these women held the key to improving their relationships, but until they used that power to affect the kind of change they wanted, it was hard for them to see that.

I remember it was hard for me to see it at first, too.

You might argue that a lot of divorces are still the husband’s fault, and that women only initiate more divorces because men do things to make women divorce them, but that’s not what the data shows.

One study found that among women and men whose parents were divorced, only the women had a higher divorce rates themselves—not the men.

Why?

The women from broken homes were using a failed recipe for intimacy in their marriages by modeling what they saw their mothers do.

It stands to reason that if the keeper of the relationship doesn’t have great skills for intimacy, the relationship will flounder.

The guys whose parents split up saw no change in their divorce rate because they don’t have much power to affect the relationship, and they aren’t the ones who initiate divorce, for the most part.

It doesn’t much matter what those men saw modeled in their childhood, because they can’t make or break the romance–that’s up to their wives.

The guys’ job is to show up and try to make us happy–if we’ll let them. And no matter how miserable we are, my experience is that men will keep trying to make us smile.

The reason we initiate more divorces is that as highly emotional beings, we women are constantly re-evaluating our situation, and searching out the source of any unhappiness (i.e., “I do all the work around here!”).

One of the questions we ask ourselves is, “I wonder if I could have married better?”

Familiarity really does breed contempt, and sometimes, because the man we married has certain good qualities that we’re used to having around, we start to crave the qualities he lacks.

If you married an ambitious hard-charger, you might wish for someone with a little more hakuna matata.

And if your partner is very laid back, you may find yourself craving someone more lively or driven.

Add some hormones to that line of thinking, some poor relationship skills and, let’s say, a few nights of inadequate sleep, and what do you get?

A wife who’s asking for a divorce.

Okay, that might be me I’m thinking of. Hopefully you’re less impulsive than I was.

Guys may gripe or feel unhappy, too, but they are a lot less likely to see divorce as an option to improve their situation.

From talking to them, I get the impression that no matter how unhappy they are, they feel their decision to marry their wives is done–and that’s that.

Unless their wives brings it up, most men will not even consider divorce.

Therefore, since you’re the one who’s far more likely to bring it up–not him–you have inordinate power to choose a lifelong marriage instead of divorce.

4. Women have the Power to Set the Culture of the Relationship

You know the expression, “If mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy?”

Of course you do. Because that’s what husbands swear by. They know it to be true.

You have the power to set the culture for the relationship, to make it tender or tense, playful or practical, flirtatious or frustrating.

If you’re having a hard time believing that, it’s only because you haven’t yet learned how to use your power.

You may not even know what your power is, or what it looks like, since it’s completely different from the power you wield at work. But you definitely have the power to Make Your Marriage Happier.

And once you know how to use it, you’ll be on your way to having your birthright, which is lifelong romance with a man who adores, cherishes and desires you.

I know it’s hard to believe.

I didn’t believe I had the key at first, either.

Every woman my coaches and I work with starts out thinking what I used to think: that if only her man would change, the relationship would get better.

But it turns out it’s just the opposite. The change has to come from us women.

You might be thinking, “You don’t know my husband, and he’s just not the type of guy to desire, cherish and adore me.”

That may be true, but if your husband is a good guy, then I know from my work with thousands of women in relationships with regular guys like yours that he really wants to make you happy.

The main thing that’s standing between him and doing that?

It’s most likely you.

Not that you’re trying to sabotage your relationship. I know you’re not.

It might seem like your guy is the one who needs to change, and I’m sure you’ve done what you can to help him improve.

But it turns out, he has very little power to transform your relationship.

And if it’s unhappy, then you have been unwittingly sabotaging it–perhaps because you had bad modeling or because no one taught you the skills to create a great relationship. That’s hardly your fault!

Conversely, if your relationship is dreamy–or at least, parts of it are dreamy–I give you all the credit for using your power wisely.

You can change things right now, starting today, by learning and practicing the skills that contribute to intimacy.

If you know the skills and you’re struggling to apply them in your relationship, that just means you need more support.

I also needed support to practice the skills.

I still do.

That’s why I created a worldwide community of women who are all committed to creating happy relationships, and therefore stronger families. We all help each other to stay encouraged and inspired. It helps a lot!

And together, we’ve been able to avoid divorce by making our marriages great again.

You can do the same thing by using your feminine gifts.