Men, Know You are Needed
On the first morning of my spring break last year I found myself running through the airport, almost missing my early morning flight home. I was one of the last people on the airplane, so I nestled into my middle seat in between a random man in the window seat and a random woman in the aisle seat. I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I get on planes I have this overwhelming feeling that the person next to me needs someone to talk to. I remember feeling like I shouldn’t put my headphones in, and instead started laughing with the man next to me about how I almost missed the flight. For the remainder of the hour-long flight, this man and I continued to have a conversation. I told him I was preparing to join The Culture Project and he began opening up to me about many things he had struggled with in his life, including two divorces, leaving the Catholic Church, finding himself stuck in a cycle of one-night-stands, and really not having anyone to turn to.
At one point he was speaking about how lonely he has felt, and with much sadness in his eyes he told me, “Yea, women just don’t need men anymore.”
My heart broke to see how dejected he was in regards to not feeling an appreciation for his masculinity; for not feeling needed. For years and years, he was never able to truly feel like a man because the women in his life never let him be one. They might not have intentionally tried to hurt him in this way, but I’m sure in the little ways our society tells women that we need to act, they repeatedly tore him down rather than built him up.
Now I’m not saying he needed to be built up as some “macho-man” or anything like that, and I’m sure he wasn’t perfect in the relationships, but I think all too often, we as women don’t recognize the beauty of masculinity. We don’t recognize that our world needs masculinity just as much as it needs femininity.
I looked at this man and said, “Oh but we do, we all need each other so desperately.”
I continued to apologized to him on behalf of the women who have hurt him; for all those feelings of being unnecessary, unneeded, bothersome, you name it.
In reflecting on this experience, I saw that too often today, we don’t realize that men and women not only need each other, but want to know they are needed by each other.
So to all the men out there reading this, I am sorry for the moments when it feels your masculinity is unappreciated. I am sorry for the times when you have tried to support, protect and love the women in your life, but were told you weren’t needed. I’m sorry that so much of our culture today makes it seem like you are wrong to do little things like holding the door open for a woman or compliment her. And I’m sorry that other men haven’t recognized what it means to serve and love women well, leading to so many of the issues between men and women we see today.
As a woman, what I want you to know is that it doesn’t go completely unnoticed. Keep trying, keep serving, and keep doing all the things your masculine heart tells you to do to truly protect those around you.
We NEED you. We need your strength, your clarity in decision making, your humor, your reasonable nature. There’s so much you have to offer as men that is needed in our world.
As the flight was ending the woman on the aisle broke into our conversation about the beautiful sunrise we were landing over. She then looked at me and said something along the lines of “I was trying to sleep on this flight, but I couldn’t sleep because I was so amazed by the truth you were speaking into this man’s life. I want you to know I was praying for you and all you were saying to him this entire flight, and that you are right about how men and women need each other.”
I don’t know where my two flight companions are, but I hope both of them have allowed that conversation to change the way they interact with and appreciate the opposite sex. I know it did for me.
