Fashioned for Intimacy

When I read Fashioned for Intimacy by Jane Hansen for the first time, I scarfed it up. I labeled it as one of the best relationship books I’ve ever read, and I meant it. So when I decided to re-read it earlier this year, I was surprised at how differently I feel about it now. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t have the freshness and wonder of a brand new read. Maybe it’s because I’m a different person now. But for whatever reason, I didn’t experience the same joy on my second foray through the book.

I still agree with many of her insights. And I think she has some valid ideas of how the roles of men and women could be reconciled to the design that God initiated in the beginning. I particularly liked how Hansen affirms that men and women have different strengths, and those strengths are not meant to be in competition (who's stronger and in charge here?) but in cooperation (how can we be stronger together?). I think women who deal with dependency or identity issues would benefit from the wisdom offered in it's pages, so Fashioned for Intimacy is still worthy of a read-through. But I wouldn’t call it the “best relationship book ever.”

Heart of Jane's message:
"The woman is uniquely and specifically designed to stand before the man in an intimate, face-to-face relationship. However, although women were meant to look to God to find their life, identity, value and significance, since the fall of Eve in the dawn of creation, they have looked instead to men to fulfill these needs. Only when a woman's heart is turned back to God to meet her needs, she is…free to be the help God intended her to be: to draw the man out of his aloneness by relating on a level that moves past the surface and touches the deep places of his heart. She is then able to stand in a healthy, face-to-face relationship with him."

"Jane Hansen on Male Female Reconciliation." Jane Hansen, October 24, 2004