“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked my husband, Dana, after picking him up from work last week.

“Uh, I don’t know.” He looked alarmed.

“You know,” I said. “Your secrets.”

Then I gave him a good long stare to see whether anything was forthcoming.

It wasn’t.

After overcoming my disappointment I told him I was reviewing David Murrow’s latest what-you-want-to-know-about-your-man (or maybe you don’t) book, “What Your Husband Isn’t Telling You” (Bethany House, 2012). The self-proclaimed “Guided Tour of a Man’s Body, Soul, and Spirit” follows Murrow’s New York Times Bestseller, “Why Men Hate Going to Church.” Deborah Arca, who manages a book club at the online religious website Patheos, sent me the book for this week’s review.

Admittedly, when I read the title I was pretty skeptical. Then I thought, What do I have to lose? And plunged in the day the book arrived in my mailbox. By the time I picked up Dana that evening, I’d already plowed through the first eighty or so pages and discovered what motivates my husband. Finally!  Number one: the desire to provide. Number two: the desire to protect.

“What happened to the desire to procreate?” a friend’s teenage son later questioned.

As for my husband, when asked, “What motivates you?” he said, “ice-cream!”

Apparently, this was an area Murrow (or the handful of sociologists he cites) seem to have overlooked, although I find this hard to believe given the girth of American men (and women, yes, I know).

But as a wife and mom who knows how hard my husband works to provide, I appreciated Murrow’s faith in men. Once a man’s motives are better understood, his wife will better appreciate his desire to stalk beautiful women in the supermarket–or so Murrow seems to believe, after detailing his own “sexual hunting” after “hearing the modern mating call–the clip-clop of high heels” coming from the produce section of a grocery store. After spying his prey, a statuesque goddess (his words), Murrow admits planning a route that will take him past her and later savors the smell of her perfume.

“Does this happen all the time?” Murrow asks. “Yes,” he answers.

Murrow then defends his actions by making an indistinct distinction between “looking and lusting.”

Right.

So, naturally, by the time I’d read this,  I no longer wanted to know what my husband was thinking. Or at least what Murrow’s wife’s husband was thinking.

He even goes so far as to say, “Men are only attracted to healthy women in their childbearing years,” which flies in the face of the two lovely gentlemen who hotly pursued my husband’s widowed grandmother, then in her eighties. So maybe the author forgot that older folks enjoy enjoy companionship too. Or maybe this can be explained by Murrow’s view that men (married or not) are always looking for the hottest female in the room.

By this point I wanted to pull a pillow over my face–or my  husband’s.

A few days later, when I could bear to pick up the book again, I discovered that to his credit, Murrow moves beyond sex to examining a men’s other motivations and needs including ways women can encourage their husbands–looking their best, providing good food, not praying too long, and showing appreciation.

Not many deep answers here, but an ample opportunity to ask your mate–really ask, “What are you thinking?”

If you buy the book, read it together. If nothing else, it’s a springboard for honest conversation.