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As For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men describes 7 things that many women misunderstand about men, For Men Only, Revised and Updated Edition: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women gives men insight about inner lives of women. Men tend to think that women are complex and random, as this conversation from Shaunti, her husband, Jeff, and several women they surveyed.

JEFF: Guys tend to think that women are random. We think, I pulled this lever last week and got a certain reaction. But when I pulled that same lever this week, I got a totally different reaction. That’s random!

WOMAN IN GROUP: But we aren’t random! If you pull the lever and get a different reaction, either you’re pulling a different lever or you’re pulling it in a different way.

SHAUNTI: What men need is a sort of map to their wives or girlfriends. Because we can be mapped. We can be known and understood—firm ground.

JEFF: Uh, no. See, guys think of a woman as a swamp. You can’t see where you’re stepping, and sooner or later you just know you’re going to get stuck in quicksand. And the more you struggle to get free, the deeper you get sucked in. So every guy on the planet knows that the best thing to do is just shut down and not struggle and hope somebody comes along to rescue you.

For Men Only offers a map for men to understand women. These are 7 things about women that men tend to overlook.

Men surface understanding	What that means in practice
She needs to feel loved.	Even if your relationship is great, your mate likely has a fundamental insecurity about your  love—and when that insecurity is triggered, she may respond in ways that confuse or upset you until she feels reassured.
Women are emotional	Women deal with multiple thoughts and emotions from their past and present all the time, at the same time—and these can't be easily dismissed
She is impossible to figure out	There is usually a logical reason behind her baffling words or actions—and behavior that confuses or frustrates you often signals a need she is asking you to meet.
Women want security—in other words, financial security	Your woman needs emotional security and closeness with you so much that she will endure financial insecurity to get it.
She doesn't want you to fix it; she just wants you to listen	When she is sharing an emotional problem, her feelings and her desire to be heard are much more important than the  problem itself.
She doesn't want sex much—which means she must not want me	Physically, women tend to crave sex less often than men do—and it is usually not related to your desirability.
She wants to look attractive	Inside your smart, secure wife lives a little girl who deeply needs to know that you  find her beautiful—and that you only have eyes for her.

Here’s the explanation for the first point, about how women need to feel loved. To put it simply, women need reassurance about her husband’s love.

It’s no surprise that a woman needs to feel loved. What is a surprise is how easy it is for her to not feel loved….. Buried inside most women—even those in great relationships—is a latent insecurity about whether their man really loves them.

The research in this book shows:

Seven out of every ten women said that their relationship and how their man felt about them was anywhere from occasionally to nearly always on their minds…. When we asked women what they meant by “occasional” concern about how their man felt about them, I often heard that it meant several times a week or whenever it was triggered.

Women insecurity about relationship is the same as men insecurity about providing. As one woman said,

“You know that record that’s always running in a guy’s head about providing? Well, we have the same fundamental concern about our relationship all the time. And if it’s not going well, it can mess up everything else in our lives.”

What makes women feel insecure? The major things that trigger women to ask “Do you still love me?”:

  Conflict. For us, as guys, conflict is just conflict—it’s not a signal or a start of something bigger. But as one woman explained, “A lot of desperate feelings surface for me when I feel like my husband is displeased with me. I know it sounds old-fashioned, and I’m a pretty independent person, but it still really affects me.”
  Withdrawal. When we’re faced with conflict, men tend to retreat into silence to escape unwanted feelings. Often we can’t fully articulate something yet or we want to avoid saying something hurtful. Unfortunately, seeing her man withdraw or become moody usually generates unwanted feelings for a woman. Several women described what crossed their mind this way: What happens if he doesn’t snap out of it this time? 
  Silence. Because women have a radar for unspoken conflict, it’s pretty easy for women to jump to conclusions when their man is more withdrawn or quieter than usual. As one woman put it, “If you’re quiet, it must be me.” The women told me it makes a big difference when a guy sees the misunderstanding for what it is and uses it as an opportunity to reassure her. (“I’m not mad, don’t worry. Just concerned about work.”)
  Her emotional bank account is depleted. Perhaps she’s exhausted, or you’ve been absent a lot (even necessary absences can be draining). Maybe the two of you have unresolved issues and conflicts. Regardless of the reason, even if it has nothing to do with you, her insecurity will be more easily triggered if her emotional reserves are low. 

What can a man do to reassure his wife that she is still loved? Here are some tips in this book.

#1 During conflict, reassure her of your love

During conflict, men tend to pull away and get some space. Before pulling away, reassure her of your love first.

This is the magic bullet that almost every woman told us would make all the difference: if their man would say something like “I’m angry right now, and I need some space, but I want you to know: we’re okay.” On the survey, a whopping 95 percent of women said that this one step on our part would diminish or even eliminate the emotional turmoil on their part!

...

Chances are, in the midst of conflict, your woman is feeling unloved (even unlovable) and needs you to look her in the eye and tell her that you love her and you’re not going anywhere.

#2 If She’s Upset, Realize That She Doesn’t Need Space—She Needs a Hug

One woman put it this simple when she is upset,

All I want is him to know that half the time I’m just as confused as he is. Instead of getting upset and leaving me alone to “calm down,” I just want him to come close and give me a huge hug and let me know he loves me and he wants me to feel better again.

#3 If She Needs to Talk About the Relationship, Do Your Best to Listen Without Becoming Defensive

“When I tell him how I feel about something concerning our relationship, I am just trying to share my feelings so we can discuss it,” one woman said. “But he takes it as criticism, and then I feel like the bad guy for bringing it up. I wish he could understand that it’s important for me to be able to talk about these things and understand that I’m not just being critical.”

#4 If She Is Being Difficult, Don’t Stop—Keep Reassuring Her of Your Love

You have to realize, if a woman says, “I need to hear that you love me,” and the guy dutifully says, “I love you,” well, that’s essentially meaningless: like she made him say something he didn’t feel. So if she’s feeling confused and neglected and really does want to be assured of his feelings, she can’t just ask.

And if they are at odds, she’s maybe a little mad at him, so when he approaches her, she pushes him away even though closeness is what she most wants! But if he’ll put aside his pride and try again, if he’ll risk grabbing her hand and saying something like, “Don’t go away. I want to know what’s wrong,” that will break through her defenses. It tells her that no matter how she’s feeling right then—whew—he really loves her.

Ask yourself, What did I do when we were dating that made me so pickin’ irresistible?

Probably you spent hours just hanging out together. You listened. You flirted. You sent e-mails or texts during the day just to say hi. You shared dreams. You said things like “I can’t imagine life without you” and “I’m so glad God brought us together.”

In other words, you proved to her that you were smitten.  

I’m not talking about the big-deal events you planned to impress your bride-to-be, like the picnics in the park or the months you spent secretly getting tickets to her dream concert. I’m talking about the little things that speak love to her. Every. Single. Day. Like putting your arm around her in church. Or the text message that says, “I was just thinking about what a great mom you are.” Or reaching to take her hand when you’re walking across a parking lot.

No matter what you do, those little things say one thing: I would choose you all over again. Today. That reassurance—every day—goes so deep into her heart that all those buried doubts are laid to rest.

In For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men, Shaunti Feldhahn researched about simple truths about men that women overlooked. She found the truths that men don't know how to explain them to women.

I discovered that there were many things I thought I understood about men—but really didn't. In several areas, my understanding was purely surface-level. Once I got below the surface and into specifics, everything changed. I felt like a cartoon character who  suddenly had a lightbulb over my head.

Even better, it turned  out that those revelations were mostly about things that my own husband always wished I knew but couldn't figure out how to explain. And that was a common refrain from most of the men I talked to.

She interviewed 400 married men and covered the results in these seven revelations about men.

When I interviewed men and drew some conclusions, they would often say, 'But women already know that...surely they  know that."All too frequently, I found myself replying, 'Well, I didn't know that.' I began to realize that there's so much about men that we (women) don't understand—and that men don't even know we don't know. And that sort of misunderstanding is the stuff that gives birth to a lot of conflict.

These are 7 revelations that many women may not have realized before.

When I was a year or two out of college, I went on a retreat that profoundly impacted my understanding of men. The theme of the retreat was “Relationships,” which as you can imagine was of great interest to a group of single young adults.

For the very first session, the retreat speaker divided the room in half and placed the men on one side, women on the other.

“I’m going to ask you to choose between two bad things,” he said. “If you had to choose, would you rather feel alone and unloved in the world OR would you rather feel inadequate and disrespected by everyone?”

I remember thinking, What kind of choice is that? Who would ever choose to feel unloved?

The speaker then turned to the men’s side of the room. “Okay, men. Who here would rather feel alone and unloved?”

A sea of hands went up, and a giant gasp rippled across the women’s side of the room.

He asked which men would rather feel disrespected, and we women watched in bemusement as only a few men lifted their hands.

Then it was our turn to answer and the men’s turn to be shocked when most of the women indicated that they’d rather feel inadequate and disrespected than unloved.

In a relationship conflict, crying is often a women response to feeling unloved, and anger is often a man's response to feeling disrespected.

Many men said the one thing they wished they could tell their wives was to "show more trust in my decision-making abilities"—which is code for (among other things) "I'm not stupid."

If she doesn’t trust me in something as small as finding my way along a road, why would she trust me in something important, like being a good breadwinner or a good father? If she doesn’t respect me in this small thing, she probably doesn’t really respect me at all.

The next time your husband stubbornly drives in circles, ask yourself what is more important: being on time to the party or his feeling trusted. No contest.

Not long ago, I was asking Jeff and one of his married colleagues about the dynamic of men wanting to do things for themselves. This man said, “Sometimes, if something breaks in the house, I want to try to take a crack at it before I call an expert. If my wife says, ‘Well, you’re really not a fix-it–type person,’ I feel so insulted. She’s not rude about it or anything, but it’s like she doesn’t respect me enough to believe that I can figure it out if I put my mind to it, even if it takes me a while.”

This man’s wife is one of my closest friends, and I know that she respects her husband and would never intentionally disparage him. So it was eye-opening to hear that what was (to her) an offhand remark was something he took extremely seriously—and, if I may delicately say so, extremely wrong.

Just as your man will be hurt and angry if you disrespect him in public, he will think you are the most wonderful woman in the world if you publicly build him up. This is not artificial. It simply means taking those little opportunities to honestly praise him or to ask his opinion in front of others. Do you think he’s a great father? Tell your dinner guests a story about something he did with the kids yesterday that proves it. Are you impressed with his baseball ability? Brag on his great game last weekend. Did he take the kids out and let you sleep in Saturday morning? Tell your book club and make the other girls jealous.

Trust me—from the men I’ve talked to, that will be the equivalent of his coming home to you with a dozen roses and a surprise date night without the kids. He will feel adored.

To us, repeatedly asking “Have you done it yet?” is probably not a big deal. But inherent in the question is our assumption that the guy needs the reminder—that he is either incapable of remembering on his own or that he remembers just fine but needs our prodding to do the job. It’s no wonder many men hate being nagged. What they are accurately hearing is “I don’t trust you.”

Instead, what if we were to proactively assume the best of him instead of the worst? For example: “I asked him to do it. He hasn’t done it. I trust my husband. Therefore, there’s a reason he hasn’t done it.”

Just realize that his reason for not doing it may be different from yours—which makes it no less legitimate. Remember, half the men on the survey indicated that sometimes they just have different priorities. Or they could just be unable to handle one more thing. One man with a stressful job noted that he sometimes feels like a computer that will crash if he tries to load one more thing onto it. For him, procrastinating on something his wife wants him to do at home is his warning sign that he will emotionally (or even physically) crash if he tries it.