Wild at Heart (men):
- a battle to fight
- an adventure to live
- a beauty to rescue
This is easiest for me to remember by A-B-B: adventure, battle, beauty. (Thank you, Andrew!) Initially, I was imagining the adventure to be outdoors, but it could be in math, or music, or whatever gives that thrill of discovery and challenge. I think of the battle like a mission. As for the beauty, I just picture Murron in Brave Heart, sigh. A related question that apparently preoccupies men is: do I have what it takes?
Captivating (women):
- to be romanced (or pursued)
- to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure
- to unveil beauty
I'm having a hard time with these points, though there must be something to them since enough people I respect relate to these books and their premise. Related questions that apparently preoccupy women are: am I lovely (or captivating)? do you see me? do I have a beauty all my own?
The male and female points are intentionally linked to each other, by design, so that men and women can answer each other's longings. These books did a great job in establishing some ground work and will surely remain classics, but I personally feel limited by these three core motivations, and somehow have grown a little tired of this plot.
What is more interesting to me, at this point in my life, is Donald Miller's book Scary Close which feels to me like a fuller portrait of love, accounting for the myriad psychological influences that can disconnect us from ourselves and from others. All with his trademark easy-to-relate-to style and humor. Some of my favorite excepts include:
"Good friends do that; they guard each other when things get scary by putting themselves in between their friends and what could harm them." - Bob Goff (in the foreword)
"Having integrity is about being the same person on the inside that we are on the outside, and if we don't have integrity, life becomes exhausting." (p.65)
"A woman, though, can rob your manhood and reduce you to a boy at the drop of a word." (p.97)
"...more to do with keeping people contained that with setting them free. And I'm no fan of it." (p.124)
"...unless people feel safe around us, intimacy would never happen." (p.165)
With this, I laughed out loud. A lot.
"I don't think men are as bad at intimacy as we might think. It's just that we get pressured to go about intimacy in ways that are traditionally more feminine, specifically we're asked to talk about it and share our feelings. We don't really want to do that." (p.188)
