Because some kinds of love are too big for smaller words.
The Flinch
It happens at dinner parties. It happens at the dentist. It happened once in the checkout line at Costco, which is not where I expected to discuss the theology of desire, but there we were, between the rotisserie chickens and a forty-eight-pack of paper towels.
Someone asks what I’m working on. I tell them I’ve written a book about men. They smile. Men. Lovely. A safe enough subject. Then they ask for the title, and I give it to them, all of it: Magnificent Men: How Men Are Undervalued and How Worshipping and Being Worshipped Can Bring You the Hot and Holy Love You Desire.
And there it is.
The flinch.
It’s small. A blink held half a second too long. A tiny tug at the corner of the mouth. The quiet recalibration of a person who thought she was chatting with a nice therapist and has just realized she’s standing next to a woman holding a lit match.
Nobody flinches at “undervalued.” Nobody flinches at “Hot and Holy Love,” which honestly surprises me. Everybody flinches at “worship.”
I’ve watched that flinch for a while now, and I’ve come to appreciate it. A word that still makes people blink is a word that is still alive. Most of our words about love have been handled so much they’ve gone smooth, like old coins. This one still has edges.
Everybody Flinches Differently
The churchgoer flinches first and fastest. Isn’t that idolatry? You shall have no other gods before me. She says it gently, the way you’d remind someone they left their headlights on, as if I’d just proposed building a golden altar to Gary from accounting and sacrificing a goat to him on Fridays.
The feminist flinches next. We spent fifty years getting women up off their knees, and now you want to put them back down? I understand the reflex. But the knees she’s thinking of were scrubbing floors. Those are not the knees I’m writing about.
My fellow therapists flinch in their own special way. They reach for the language of codependency and enmeshment the way some people reach for garlic when a stranger knocks after dark.
And men. Men flinch most quietly of all. You can see him doing arithmetic behind his eyes. Worship. From a woman. No one adores a man for free. There’s a catch. There’s always a catch. Somewhere in this deal there’s a clause in very small print.
Of all the flinches, that one is the one that gets me. Not because it’s foolish. Because it’s earned. Because a man who does that math has usually been handed a great many invoices dressed up as gifts.
What I Don’t Mean
So let me take the flinches one at a time.
I don’t mean idolatry. An idol is something you shrink down to a size you can manage, then polish and put on a shelf. Idols are required to be perfect, and they are punished when they aren’t. Worship, the way I mean it, goes the other direction. It makes room for the whole man: the snoring, the socks, the terrible jokes he tells twice, the fear he hides so well that even he forgets it’s there. I don’t worship a man because I think he’s a god. I worship him because he’s a man. That is harder, and it is holier.
And I don’t mean submission. Nobody in this book is on their knees unless they’re enjoying it.
And I don’t mean a one-way street, with women as permanent worshippers and men as permanent statues. That arrangement would bore everyone to tears, including the statues.
What I mean is simpler and much more demanding. Seeing him. Admiring him. Cherishing him. Revering him. And then choosing all of that again the next day, and the day after that, long after the novelty has worn off and the dishes have piled up. Worship is not a feeling that sweeps over you. It’s something you do on an ordinary Tuesday.
The Promise We Quietly Edited Out
Here is the part that makes the churchgoer put down her coffee.
For centuries, in the English marriage service of the Book of Common Prayer, a groom stood at the altar, took his bride by the hand, and said out loud in front of God and everyone: “With my body I thee worship.”
Not “I appreciate you.” Not “I’ll try to be supportive of your goals.” With my body I thee worship.
The man said it. To the woman. In church. Generation after generation, sober bishops and blushing farm boys, standing in their best clothes and promising exactly the thing that makes people flinch in the Costco line today.
Eventually later prayer books softened the line or dropped it. Too frank, apparently. Too bodily. We replaced it with nicer, safer words, and nicer, safer words are what we’ve been living on ever since.
So when people tell me worship is an outrageous thing to ask of a woman, I smile. I’m not inventing something scandalous. I’m returning a gift. For hundreds of years, men promised to worship women with their bodies. The very least we can do is say it back. And mean it.
Why No Smaller Word Will Do
Believe me, I’ve tried the smaller words on. They don’t fit.
Appreciate is what you do for a coworker who fixed the printer. Admire is what you do to a sunset or a well-built deck. Respect is essential, and I’ll fight for it, but you can respect a man you would never dream of touching. Cherish comes close, and I love it dearly, but cherish lives mostly in the heart. It keeps its clothes on.
Worship is the only word I know that can hold the sacred and the erotic in the same breath. It belongs in the sanctuary and in the bedroom, and it refuses to choose between them. That refusal is the whole point. It’s where the sacred and the obscene do the dance of love.
Using a smaller word would be like lighting a single birthday candle in a cathedral. Technically, it’s light. It just isn’t enough light to see what the place was built for.
Somebody Has to Go First
Worshipping and being worshipped. Both halves matter, and the book means both. And even better, it tells you how to get there.
But love has a standoff problem. Two good people stand across the room from each other, each waiting for the other to be the one who risks looking foolish. Each one is thinking, I’ll show him how I feel as soon as he shows me. It’s a very polite way to starve.
Somebody has to go first. I’m asking women to consider being the one. Not because men deserve it more, and not because women owe it. Because as of late, men have gone the longest without it, and because a woman who goes first with an open heart is not weak. In fact, she is the bravest person in the room.
And here is the secret nobody tells you: when worship is received well, it comes back. A man who is truly seen doesn’t sit there like a statue soaking it up. He lights up. He turns toward her. He starts looking for ways to make her feel the way she made him feel. Worship is contagious in the best possible way.
Why I’m Keeping the Word
I’ve been advised, more than once and by people who love me, to soften the title. Honor, they suggest. Adore. Celebrate. Every one of them would make the book a little easier to explain at dinner parties. Every one of them would make it a little easier to ignore.
I’m keeping the word.
I’m keeping it because men have been handed plenty of soft words that cost nothing to say. I’m keeping it because it is big enough to hold what I actually mean. I’m keeping it because the flinch is not a warning sign. It’s the sound of a door that hasn’t been opened in a long time.
So the next time I’m standing in line with my paper towels and someone asks about the book, I’ll give them the whole title again. I’ll watch for the flinch. And I’ll smile, because somewhere out there a man is reading that same word on a book cover, doing his quiet arithmetic, looking for the catch.
I hope he looks as long as he likes.
There isn’t one.
Randi Fredricks, Ph.D.
Chapter Companion Song:
— “Worship You,” Kane Brown, 2020
This article is based on concepts from Randi Fredricks, Ph.D.’s book Magnificent Men: How Men Are Undervalued and How Worshipping and Being Worshipped Can Bring You The Hot and Holy Love You Desire, exploring the restoration of men’s dignity and worth, the sacred and sensual dimensions of intimacy, and hot and holy love.
Author Bio
Randi Fredricks, Ph.D. is a best-selling author and provocateur whose work explores love, relationships, sexuality, spirituality, and the magnificent complexity of being human. For more than three decades, she has explored what helps people connect more deeply, love more courageously, and create extraordinary relationships. Her writing blends psychology, spirituality, humor, and eroticism, with a particular passion for restoring the dignity and value of men and exploring the possibilities of Hot and Holy Love. At the heart of her work is a simple conviction: all human beings deserve and are capable of extraordinary love — and a beautiful life.
