What Every Husband Needs from His Wife

Whenever I mention Big Fat Greek Wedding, I typically get two responses.  The first is a blank stare because they haven’t heard of it.  The movie is 13 years old, which must mean that I am 100 years old.  (Back to the Future is 30 years old.  Original Star Wars is 38 years old.  I saw all of these movies in the theater.  My first movie in the theater was Apple Dumpling Gang which is 40 years old.)  For people that remember the movie, everyone remembers Windex.  The dad in the movie believed that Windex would cure anything and he was always spraying it on people.  At my house it was Spectrocin plus.  It could heal a broken bone.

Anyway, the scene that I remember is when the daughter is wanting to go to school and she is talking to her mom and aunt about it.  The daughter’s concern is that Dad will not approve and that no only does he have to go along, but it needs to be his idea.  She’s discouraged and said, “You know Dad.  He’s the head of the family.  It has to be his idea.”  Then the mom says something that has stuck with me for 13 years, “Yes the man he is the head, but the wife, she is the neck, and the neck turns the head wherever she wants it to go.”

I give that quote a D- for manipulation, but an A+ for accuracy.  The wife has incredible power in the marriage relationship over her husband.  In fact, a woman in any serious relationship with a man will have incredible power.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a mom and son or a dating relationship or just great friends, the woman has great power.  Read my wife’s awesome words on that here.  (We have been taking turns on writing on love and respect.  You can see the tag at the bottom.  Trying to get a husband and wife perspective on the same topics.)

Countless times I have heard women say that they wish that their husbands were better leaders, took more initiative, helped more, served more.  These women are often desperate.  They believe that they have tried everything and nothing seems to be working.  However, far too often what “trying everything” means is nagging, yelling, and passive-aggressive behavior.  On their best day, perhaps is means calmly complaining.  None of that has worked.  Unfortunately, those things rarely work.  A husband should respond to the desperate cries of his wife, but he rarely does.

Well, what works then?  You are the neck.  Steer him to where you want to go, but you must use different fuel, a different way to motivate–your positive words.  Your husband will become what you say that he is.  If you say that he is great leader and husband, he will become one.  You tell him that you are proud of him and he will be someone to be proud of.

“But what if he is an idiot and not great at those things? Am I supposed to lie?”

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer:  Affirm him in the areas in which he is doing well and try to keep quiet on the areas in which he is not.  Behavior that you affirm will be repeated.  If that sounds manipulative, so be it.  I assure you that he will prefer this type of manipulation to any other kind that you have tried.  He will be driven by your words of encouragement.  Even if you both read this and he knows what you are doing, he won’t care.  He will just love the affirmation.

Respect is the fuel that drives men.  Men define respect in marriage as affirmation (believing in him) and sexual responsiveness. (Read Heidi’s words on that here.)  When a man has both of those things, a wife that both tells him that she thinks that he is great and shows him that she thinks he’s great by responding to him physically, he becomes a great man.  When a man lacks those, he becomes passive and resentful, all the things that frustrate their wives so much.

“But WAIT! He should be a good husband and leader without those things.  He shouldn’t need me to tell him and have sex with him to be who he is supposed to be.  That’s pitiful.”

Correct.  He shouldn’t.  But we burn way too much energy talking about what “should” be true instead of dealing in the reality of what is true.  It is also true that a wife is called unconditionally by God to do those things for her husband regardless of her perception of his worthiness.  God’s commands for a wife to respect her husband and to respond to him are unconditional, just as the commands for him to love and lead are unconditional.  We need to stop thinking of our basic responsibilities to our spouses as quid pro quo, but unconditional commands from God.

Furthermore, we will finish where we started.  You have great power.  You are a strong neck.  If it didn’t matter if you were respecting and responding, then that would be you having no power or influence at all, when in fact you have tremendous power. If you have great power, then you need to use it wisely.  You have the power to make or break the man in your life. He will become what you say that he is.  Better said, he will become what you believe that he is.  If you believe he is worthless, he will prove you right.  However, if you choose to believe that he is a great man who just needs a little encouragement, I promise you, you will be pleasantly surprised by the great man he becomes.

Spiderman’s Words to Wives

I have become convinced of something over the course of our years of counseling couples.  Although most men would never say “words of affirmation” is their love language and may even take offense to the notion of needing words of praise and encouragement, their souls are starved for such words.

Usually when I throw out an idea such as this, I encourage ladies to discuss it with the men in their lives—ask them to weigh in.  However, I am encouraging a different approach here.  Asking a man if he needs or wants affirming words from you will be received much like you asking him if he would like for you to have fresh flowers delivered to him at work each week.  Nope, few guys can or will admit to needing something as un-masculine as verbal affirmation.  Don’t ask him.  Just start saying what he needs to hear.  You, more than anyone else in his life, have the power to offer your man something he is desperate for.

With great power comes great responsibility. –Spider Man

Your man is desperate to hear you say the words he longs to believe about himself.  But the same reason he can’t admit that he needs it is the reason he is longing for it.  Verbal affirmation is often not on the list of things parents feel boys need in their formative years:

• learn to bait a hook
• learn to tie a tie,
• learn the value of hard work
• · hear Mom or Dad say, “You are a great young man.”

Consequently, your man probably came into your relationship with his encouragement tank near “E.”  Even if he had parental love and support, he likely didn’t hear the words he needed to hear enough.  And if he had a hard relationship with either of his parents or an abusive or neglectful childhood, then there is a hole in his tank that may need to be mended in order to ever allow his gauge to leave “E.”

Your encouragement, your words of affirmation, mean verbally communicating to him:

I believe in you.  I think you are a great man.  I love watching you be a great dad. I am so proud to be with you.

Perhaps you are thinking, “I can’t say those things out loud.  He knows I feel all of that.  If I said that stuff, it would make him uncomfortable.”  You may have to get over feelings of awkwardness in order to actually verbalize such sentiments, and he may even seem uncomfortable the first time you say something along these lines, but push through all of the awkwardness and speak the words he needs to hear.  Need a running start?  Write him a love note and put those words on paper.

Because he is so starved for words such as these, they hold great power to affect him.  He needs them so desperately that his ears are perked, and he is ready to receive them wherever he can get them.  Let the most affirming words he hears all day come not from his boss or a coworker but from the lips of the one he loves most.

When we are counseling a couple, I will frequently suggest to the wife that she verbally affirm her husband.  Ladies, I kid you not…when I begin speaking examples (such as those listed above) of verbal affirmations, the husband in the room inevitably responds like a dog to the smell of bacon!  I am not his wife.  I am not even saying things that are true about him.  I am giving examples of the types of things she should try saying–yet his ears perk up and his tail begins to wag!  Whether he can admit it or feels like he can even respond well when you offer it, your man is hungry for you to tell him you think he’s awesome!

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

Proverbs 18:21

I will take it a step further and say that your words have the power to affect who your man becomes.  Speak words of life and tell him what you think is awesome about him, and he will aspire to live up to your view of him.  Likewise, offer words of death and destruction and he will believe he is as worthless as you say he is.  Of course there are many factors in play in a man’s life, but to large degree:

He will become what you say he is.

If that feels heavy…you are hearing me.  Your words have power, ladies.  Choose them wisely.  Offer words of life and encouragement freely and frequently and watch your words begin to unlock the greatness within your man.

If He Cried, You’d Understand

Ladies, lean in here.  I am about to share with you an insight into the male psyche that could possibly revolutionize your relationships with Y chromosome carriers.

Men often respond to hurt with anger.

If you were in a discussion with your friend/sister/mom and she began to cry, you would probably rightly conclude that she was upset.  You may have to ask “what’s wrong?” to get to the root of what had upset her, but you would have a category for her emotion.  You would know to move towards her with compassion.  Her tears would likely disarm any hostility you were feeling towards her as empathy kicked in.

However, if you were in a similar discussion with your boyfriend/husband/son and he began to raise his voice and that vein in his forehead began to throb, your response would likely be very different from the compassion and empathy that you feel for a crying girlfriend.  Rather than diffusing hostility, as tears might do, his anger probably fuels your fire.  If he is getting angry, you likely feel that you can or even should take it up a notch yourself.  “If he’s gonna yell, then I’m gonna yell too!”

Cue insight into male psyche slide here:

Men often respond to hurt with anger.

The angry male in the scenario is feeling the same emotion as the crying female—hurt.  However, because we receive his anger as aggression towards us, rather than responding with compassion to his hurt, we become aggressive ourselves, causing more hurt.

This common misunderstanding is made worse by the fact that most guys, even if you asked them “what’s wrong?” would have a difficult time identifying, much less verbalizing, why they were hurt.  Now rather than understanding his anger as hurt and trying to figure out what has caused the hurt, we are wrongly assuming he “got all mad for no reason.”

So, ladies, allow me to try to fill in some of the gaps between what we are thinking they are thinking and what they are feeling but not communicating.  And gentlemen, if any of this rightly expresses what you wish you could communicate to the women in your life, you can now just point at it and say in your best caveman voice, “This. Yes.”

• His hurt is probably rooted in feeling disrespected.

What does that even mean?  Good question.  All people have a desire to be respected (have their rights and needs matter), but for men the issue of respect goes much deeper.  God has wired men to shoulder the responsibility for providing and protecting.  We can strengthen their sense that they are man enough to rise to great responsibility through our respect.  Likewise, when they feel at all that we don’t trust them with those great responsibilities, it often echoes the ugly voices of insecurity in their heads:  “You can’t do anything right.”  “You are not man enough.”  Even if our intention is not to “disrespect,” that is what they feel when our words seem to agree with their greatest insecurities.

• To respect a man you must trust him and believe in him.

Particularly in a marriage relationship, it is as important to a man that his wife respect him as it is that she love him.  Any inkling that you do not trust him or believe in him can make him feel disrespected and hurt.  You may think that you are just reminding him of something he should be doing, pointing out a better way to tackle an issue, or pointing out a character flaw he really should address.  However, when heard through a man’s ears, words you may have meant to be helpful may feel very hurtful.

• I cannot overemphasize, ladies, how much more sensitive he is to this than you realize!

Open your eyes and ears to the men in your life and their need for respect.  Begin to notice when they get angry.  Take that as an opportunity to replay the conversation or events up to that point and see if you can find the disrespect trigger.  As you are learning to recognize disrespect triggers in the men in your life, help them learn to talk about them.  When the anger response comes, resist the instinct to respond in anger.  Instead try, “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean any disrespect.  Can you tell me what I said that made you feel that way?”  Even if you did not mean disrespect, if that is what he feels, compassion is in order.

Beginning to grasp how greatly the men in your life need your respect may feel a bit like learning a foreign language at first.  But I encourage you to tune your ears to this new language and you will begin to hear it all around you.  Your efforts to understand your men will lead to better communication, less anger and fewer tears.

THE Reason Why Marriages Struggle

I hesitate to say that this is the ONLY reason why marriages struggle, because as a mathematician, it’s hard to say 100% of the time to situations.  I also hesitate because of course there are some extreme cases of abuse, neglect, etc. that are the central issue to marriages struggling and/or ending.  However, in every encounter they we have had with dozens of married couples over the last 15 years,  the problem between the couple came down to one issue.  The presenting problems have been vast, ranging from infidelity to pornography addiction to money problems.  We have seen a lot.  However, at the core of all of these presenting problems is a deeper rooted problem that is a part of all marriages that are struggling:

The husband is not loving his wife, the wife is not respecting her husband, and they lack the ability to communicate about it well.

However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.  Ephesians 5:33

This is Paul’s summary statement about what a marriage relationship needs to look like.  He is describing what wives’ and husbands’ greatest needs are in marriage and how the other spouse is supposed to meet them.  When we can understand what this verse is asking from each of us, learn to implement it well and begin to have healthy conversations with our spouse about it, then we will see God produce healthy marriages in our homes.

What you are about to get is a relatively brief summary of the piece of advice that Heidi, my wife, and I have given countless times to numerous couples.  One of the hardest things that people say to us when we are counseling them is “We’ve been married _____ years and no one ever told us that.”  This idea is what the Bible says is the key to marriages working, our experience has backed it up numerous times and people don’t know because they haven’t heard.  That is why we talk about this in premarriage counseling all the time and why we share it with you today.  We don’t want you to struggle because you don’t know.

1)      The husband is called to love his wife. This is an unconditional command and the primary responsibility that a husband has to his wife.  The key to success is understanding what does love mean in the context of a husband’s relationship with his wife.  We have found that it comes down to 2 things.  First, a wife needs to feel cherished and valuable to her husband.  She needs to know that more than anything he values her.  He values her more than work, sports, time alone, money, other relationships.  Everything.  When she believes that there are areas or people in his life that he values more, the relationship breaks down.  Second, a wife needs security, both relational and financial security.  She needs to know that no matter what, he is not leaving.  She also needs to know that the family is going to be OK financially.  He will do whatever it takes to make sure of that and won’t do anything stupid to wreck the family.

2)      The wife is called to respect her husband. This also is an unconditional command.  “Wait, wait, wait.  Love is unconditional, but respect is earned.”  False.  That is not what the passage says.  Both commands are given without condition.  Just as a wife would say that she needs love the most when she feels unlovable, a husband needs respect when he feels unrespectable.   This also breaks down into 2 parts.  First is words of affirmation.  He needs to hear from you that you think that he is a great man and a great husband.  He needs to know that you believe in him.  Second is sexual responsiveness.  (Yep, I just said that.)  You being into him physically like he is into you makes him believe that you fully trust and respect him.

3)      Learn to talk about this well. Understand yourself well enough to know why you are getting angry.  You aren’t angry with your husband because he is messy with his dirty laundry.  You are angry because he is showing you that he doesn’t value you or your time enough to pick up his stuff.  Who cares about socks on the floor? You care about how he values you.  You also aren’t angry with your wife for asking too many probing questions about your day.  You are upset because you feel like she doesn’t trust you and is checking up on you.   Knowing why you are upset and being able to communicate that makes a huge difference.  The same goes for understanding why your spouse is upset.

Again, this is just a primer.  There is much more that could be said.  You can anticipate a lot more in-depth analysis on how we can understand and live out these three principles well over the coming weeks and months.  I leave you with this to think about.  The issue that has you so upset right now—chores, money, golf, personal space—is that really why you are upset? If not, what is it really?  What is it about those specific problems that triggers such a big response from you and how can you communicate that better to your spouse?