The Coach Daniel Ratner Podcast

Ask This Before You Say “Yes”: Will I Make Her Happy & Do I Respect Him

• By Coach Daniel Ratner

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Before you propose or say yes, ask the question that quietly predicts whether your home will feel safe, warm, and steady years from now. We unpack a counterintuitive truth: the third must-ask question changes depending on whether you’re a man or a woman—and that shift explains why some relationships grow calmer with time while others grind down under small daily frictions.

I walk through the men’s filter first: am I willing to make her happy for the rest of her life? Not as a mood, but as a practice that holds through weight gain, career setbacks, emotional valleys, and the chaos of raising kids. Then we turn to the women’s filter: do I respect him? We explore why many men experience respect as oxygen, often ranking it above overt displays of affection. You’ll hear simple, repeatable habits—like pausing a phone call to greet your partner—that send powerful signals of value without costing more than a few seconds.

Together, we map real-life scenarios that test love and respect: mismatched ambitions, hobbies you don’t admire, lifestyle differences, and the pressure to remake a partner into a fantasy. You’ll learn the difference between knowledge and wisdom, why small rituals beat grand gestures, and how core needs—attention, affection, appreciation, awareness for her; food, sex, respect for him—create momentum toward trust. If you hesitate on these questions, that hesitation is data. Use it to choose more wisely, or to build better foundations before you commit.

If this conversation gave you a clearer lens on love, share it with someone who’s dating, subscribe for more Coach Talks, and leave a quick review to tell us which question hit home for you.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, welcome to Coach Talks. I'm Coach Daniel Ratner, and today we're talking about the three questions you must ask before you decide to marry someone. We've already discussed number one and two in a different video, and today we're discussing question number three. And question number three is interesting because it's a different question if you're a man or a woman. The third question you must ask as a man before you decide to marry a woman is am I willing to make her happy the rest of her life? I know this is seems like a somewhat obvious question, but I'm not sure everyone asks this question to themselves. Which means you're 22 or 25 or 30 and you're in great shape and she's in awesome shape and like you love the looks and you love the physicality, whatever part you're in that relationship. But you have to think to yourself, you know, you're gonna get older and you're gonna get wrinkles and things start to sag and drag. And so you have to say to yourself, you know what? Am I gonna love her? Am I gonna love him when he's 30 or 40 pounds heavier? Am I gonna love her after she's had a number of children and you know she's not in the same shape she is? Am I gonna love him, you know, if he loses his job and has to go through unemployment? Am I gonna love her, you know, if she goes through some emotional turmoil? So you have to think of these things. Am I gonna love her or him if we have children that are difficult and make marriages difficult? We know that difficult children can also uh harm relationships. So for a man, he has to ask that question. Am I gonna Am I gonna make her happy no matter what happens in life? If he can't say yes, he probably can't marry her. The question for a woman is different. And I know many women are saying, well, why can't I make him happy? And the reason why, if he makes her happy, she's gonna make him happy. See, there's three certainties of life. Number one is taxes, number two is death, and number three is happy wife, happy life. I hate to say that obviously there are exceptions where there's some emotional turmoil or there's you know mental illness involved, but in general, it's gonna work out. The third question a woman was asked, a woman was asking when she marries a man Do I respect him? See, here's the thing men in their 20s don't realize it. They think they want to be loved, but they don't want to be loved, they want to be respected. Respect from men is paramount. Obviously, a man should respect his wife. The issue is, and the issue is that when he knows how to love her, which you will find out in my book, Sunscreen Love, through attention, affection, appreciation, and awareness, that respect is going to follow with it. But a man doesn't need that as much. He doesn't need the attention, affection, and appreciation as much. He needs a little bit, but for him, it's respect. See, men are very simple. We're not complicated. Don't make it complicated. I was on a podcast recently and with a PhD in in uh psychology, and she goes, I go, it's simple. If you keep it simple, if you make it complicated, it gets complicated. The men are easy. We need three things we need food, we need sex, and we need respect. And everything else is a bonus. So here's a tip for the women to help respect your husbands. When he walks into a house, when he walks home from at work or learning, whatever he's doing, and he comes into the house, you haven't seen him all day long, you pick up the phone, you're on the phone, pretend you're on the phone, or you're on the phone with your friend Sarah. Sarah, I have to go. My husband just walked in loud enough for him to hear you, and you go click, so he can hear you getting off the phone. That is a game changer in a relationship. Why? Because he sees you stopping what you're doing to show that he's walking into the house. And it makes him feel like the king of the jungle. Yes, I realize we have low self-esteem and we need to be excited. We do, we're men. That's part of what makes up who we are. But not admitting that and throwing it under the window, out the window, it makes no sense. So when we hear that, that our wife is stopping what she's doing to recognize walking in the house is a game changer for us. And I know it works, so it works with my wife. And by the way, my wife doesn't talk on the phone. She's faking it. And I know she's faking it, and she knows that I know she's faking it, and I don't care. Why? It's because she respects me, and I know she respects me because I'm walking into the house and I haven't seen her all day. When I coach young ladies and they're dating with a guy and they're not sure to marry him, this is a very common theme. This is a very common theme. I ask them, do you respect them? If they hesitate or they look away, there is an issue. If your boyfriend comes home from work and plays with Lionel trains in the basement for three hours and you don't respect it, that's going to be an issue. If your husband, you know, wants to be a librarian, you want to marry a doctor, and you don't respect him for that, that is going to be an issue. If your wife, your future wife doesn't exercise and you want someone who's healthy and eats healthy and she eats a lot of junk and you don't respect it, that is going to be an issue. Relationships aren't hard. They're easy if you have the right wisdom. See, there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. Everyone thinks they know what they're doing when they go on dating and to marry. Everyone thinks they have that idea, they know what they're doing. They have no idea. No offense. You spend more time learning to get a driver's license than you learn what it means to be in a relationship. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruitcake. If you don't go into a relationship with the proper wisdom, you're gonna be the fruit cake. Don't be a fruitcake. Know the three questions you must ask before you get married. Question number three for a man, am I willing to make her happy the rest of her life? And for a woman, do I respect him? This is Coach Gail Ratner with Coach Talks. Everything is available in my book, Sunscreen Love, available on Amazon. Thank you very much.