Your book speaks in terms of pursuing and being pursued. SE: Nor are we saying that women should be vulnerable in every area of their lives and with every person. It takes enormous strength to be a real woman. And we want to encourage her, 'don't do that.' It takes great courage to be vulnerable. When a woman forsakes her vulnerability because she's been hurt or because she lives in a dangerous world or doesn't want to be used, she loses something essential about being a woman. But one of the essential qualities of femininity is vulnerability. JE: Women can be very strong and they can be valiant that's why we have a chapter on warrior princesses. Don't diminish the vulnerability in you, which is a lovely and needed part of being a woman. We're not weak women saying, 'Rescue me, I can't handle my life.'Īs a woman, your job is not to be passive, but to become all the woman that you are meant to be, to play your irreplaceable role. But that's not the reality of our lives, and women are not victims. SE: I think there are days when every woman on the planet Earth would love to have a man come up on a white horse and whisk her away. Some feminists are against the idea of passive women who want to be rescued. And in 'Captivating,' it says that little girls often play games about being rescued. 'Wild at Heart' says every man wants a beauty to rescue. Our hearts are both wounded and those wounds shape us into the men or women that we become. JE: There are a lot of other similarities too. SE: -every woman wants to be romanced every woman wants to play an irreplaceable role in a heroic adventure, not just to be useful but to be irreplaceable and every woman longs to have a beauty that's all her own to unveil, both an external beauty and an internal beauty as well.

In fact, in 'Wild at Heart,' I said every man wants a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. JE: And yet, they're distinctly masculine and distinctly feminine.

SE: Well, they are very similar, what a man desires and what a woman desires, and they fit together really well. Now, he and his wife Stasi have teamed up to write 'Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul.' The couple sat down with Beliefnet to talk about warrior princesses, men who won't commit, and how the devil is the villain in every woman's life story.Ĭomparing 'Captivating' and John's earlier book about men, 'Wild at Heart,' how are the desires of men and women similar and different? In 2001, John Eldredge's book 'Wild at Heart' explored the inner life of Christian men-and became a bestseller.

Wild at heart book first chapter