Why Wives Find This Old-Fashioned Phrase So Attractive When Their Husbands Say It
Taylor | Unsplash “I love you.” (nope)
“You look beautiful.” (nope)
“Let’s go shopping!” (depends on how you say it, but still, no)
“How’s your mother?” (no, this will just make her suspicious of you)
Those are all nice to say, and many women want to hear them from their partner; they like to feel cherished. But none of those by themselves will necessarily have her soften all warm-putty-like into your arms.
The three words I’m referring to speak to primal forces within both men and women. An archetypal trip wire, these eight letters strung together can trigger a man’s spine to straighten and make a woman swoon.
Wives love it when their husbands say this old-fashioned phrase: I got this
LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR / Unsplash
I wish I could say I figured this one out by myself, but a lady friend had to point this out. Once she did, I looked back at my own intimate relationships and saw overwhelming evidence for her case everywhere.
We were having coffee when she started telling me about her new boyfriend. He was refined and kind, loving and intelligent. He was a creative artist, and an accomplished one at that. She felt him to be a good man, and she was happy. Then she told me about the first morning they woke up together, and that’s when she really lit up during our conversation.
She has a dog. Normally, the dog gets her up early to go pee outside when she’s still in comatose denial of an outside world. On this particular morning, when her dog woke her up as usual, her new beau opened his eyes and looked at her.
With nary a hesitation, he issued the most magical three-word phrase he could recall ever hearing from a man: I got this
She said these words slid from his mouth smooth as a river stone and strong as steel. She swooned. She relaxed. Under his sudden spell, she felt herself completely protected and cherished by this man's love. That's all he said, but in that one phrase, this is what he meant:
"I'm going to take on this uncomfortable mission-oriented task because that's how I can best offer my masculine gift right now while honoring your delicious gift of feminine energy to my life. I will demonstrate my deep commitment to your care by ensuring you can stay warm under the covers and linger in this moment of blissful embodied reverie."
He only said the first three words. That whole second paragraph is my rough translation, as I believe my friend heard it. But first, he said it, and then he did it. She was so impressed, you'd think he bought her the Eiffel Tower. All he did was walk her dog.
We live in an age when women are empowered to care for themselves like never before. I grew up mostly thinking women were supposed to "I got this" for themselves.
My two moms held strong while my two dads struggled to just hold on. It was my two moms whose strength and character were always saying, "I got this," while my dads were unconsciously saying, "Thank God you got this!"
I've always had so many messages coming at me that women are my equals in every way. That's a good thing from a certain perspective. Women are equal to men in terms of inherent human worth and value. They should have every and any right that any man has.
However, my understanding of gender equality completely overlooked certain ways my more feminine female partners and I were genuinely different.
We yearned differently, meaning we experienced the world in rather different ways, even wanting different things from each other. For example, just holding a woman is often a different experience for me than it is for my partner.
I don't embrace a woman to feel safe in her arms. When I embrace her, I feel strong in my body, masterful even, as though I'm living my purpose by wrapping her up safe and protected within my steady arms.
My female partners, in contrast, have often expressed what they love most about being in my embrace: the experience of feeling safe, physically and emotionally, that they can relax knowing they're protected in that one moment from the tiresome chaos of the world.
It's as if we both journeyed from very different worlds to secretly rendezvous in this one moment of exquisite embrace. Failing too often to account for such differences, I have struggled in most of my intimate relationships with women. A contributing factor has been my inability to step up in all kinds of situations and say to my partners, often even to myself, "I got this."
Before I wade too deep into controversial waters, let me clarify that what I'm exploring is less about man-woman and more about masculine-feminine. Any foray into masculine-feminine dynamics risks offending those who hear those terms being used synonymously. I don't mean to do that.
What I'm pointing at holds for all couples — hetero, gay, or otherwise — in which one partner carries more masculine energy and the other carries more feminine. Sometimes those energies can switch back and forth between partners.
I invite you to see through to the deeper rhythms I'm exploring, beyond the details of who has what body parts. I simply want to convey that when I look back through my life, I see far too often that I left my feminine partners to fend for themselves in ways large and small.
From making them decide where we should eat to running away when they were stressed emotionally, I failed as a husband to say: I got this
Which just means I consistently failed to convey, "Babe, I invite you to relax and trust that all will be well because I have the strength, the discipline, the fortitude, and the vision — and at the very least the unwavering perseverance — to hold us through this moment of discomfort and steward us safely to new ground where we will experience a brighter moment of ease together."
So that's a bit poetic when we're talking about walking the dog or deciding where to eat. And sometimes our partners will genuinely want to bear their own burdens, or bear them equally alongside us, or even bear ours for us. I'm painting in broad strokes here.
I invite you to say to yourself a few times: "I got this." How does that feel in your body? Do you feel your chest rise a bit, your breathing deepen, your backbone straighten? Do you come alive and start looking around the room for some challenge to take on? Or do you prefer imagining someone saying it to you?
Does the thought of your partner whispering it to you all sultry make your body soften, and your heartbeat quicken? Does it set your yearning alight? Truth is, I've always wanted a woman who can take care of herself. Which seems healthy to me, actually. Any mature adult should be able to take care of themselves in the modern world.
I don't want a partner who expects me to run around all day telling her "I got this" so she can stay in bed all day. That would just be exhausting for me and eventually frustrating for her. I'm not Superman, and she's not helpless.
Still, there's something deeply compelling about the idea of being with a woman who can fully take care of herself, and who enjoys allowing me to take care of her anyway.
Bryan Reeves is a writer, educator, author, and life and relationship coach. His bylines have appeared on The Good Men Project, Elephant Journal, Allure, Redbook, Buzzfeed, Knowledge for Men, and others.
