Love and Respect (19 page)

So when a wife comes up and says, “Can we talk?” the husband responds, “What about?” He is ready to exchange information, to give solutions. But then she says, “Oh, I don’t know. I just need to talk.” This is not a comforting line for the average husband. This throws his information exchange system totally out of whack. He begins to get suspicious. She must be setting him up to bawl him out about something.

Hannah is barren, so her husband tries analytically to solve her problem: “Why is your heart sad? Am I not better to you than ten sons?” (1 Samuel 1:8).

“JUST TALKING” IS A KEY TO UNDERSTANDING

In chapters 9 and 10 I stressed the importance of setting aside time to talk to your wife. This is not an option. This is a must. Talking is when women report to build rapport. This may sound like “small talk” to you. You may or may not be ready for it at all times, particularly after getting home from a hard day at work, but take time to talk to her if at all possible. Understand the importance she puts on sharing her report and having you share yours. You don’t have to give every detail of the day. Try, however, to go over a few highlights, a certain happening, something that will make her feel loved because she will be building rapport with the most important person in her life.

Remember, too, that wives love to talk to release their emotions. Because a woman is an integrated personality, she is like a teakettle—she collects all the things that have happened to her over the day, and there is a buildup. She needs to release some of these feelings, and it really can’t wait until tomorrow or the next day. As we discussed in chapter 10, men are compartmentalized. You can stuff things away and not have to talk about them; you don’t have pressure building inside the way your wife does. When you let her share her small talk and give her a chance to “let off steam,” she will feel good. She will feel connected to you.

“Since she is a woman”(1 Peter 3:7), God made your wife with different needs and vulnerabilities from your own; so don’t pass judgment on her.

Women also need to talk to realize their feelings. Men usually know what they are feeling, and they will talk about it if they think it is necessary. Women, on the other hand, can be feeling a lot of things but not know exactly what they are. As they begin to talk about what happened through the day, they can work back to the problem that they can’t seem to put their finger on. That’s why a wife sometimes says, “Can we talk?” When asked, “Why?” she doesn’t really know—she just had a bad day and, “I just need to talk.” As a husband, you must realize your wife needs to process her feelings—to realize exactly how she is feeling. As she talks to you, it clarifies things for her; then she feels better and she feels understood.

Sarah and I came to a point in our marriage where our kids were young and the demands of the day were heavy on both of us. So, after dinner, we told our oldest son to watch the other two, and we locked ourselves in our bedroom. This fifteen-minute period was Mom and Dad’s time, and the rule was “Don’t interrupt until we’re done.”

The best thing about those fifteen minutes after dinner was that they were predictable. Sarah knew this would be her time to talk to me, to share her feelings. At another stage in our marriage, we were having some tension because Sarah was always seeing me either coming or going. She wanted more than transitional moments to tell me all the things that she was feeling, so we set up a date night. The tension disappeared because now Sarah had a predictable time with me: Thursday nights. And so she’d save up what she had on her mind and heart. She would literally make lists, and after we had dinner somewhere, she would go down her list and we would talk.

Some husbands might be wondering, “Okay, you and Sarah talk—about
what
?” If your wife is typical, you don’t have to carry the conversation; just be sure to listen. Don’t be thinking of tomorrow’s appointment or getting the car serviced,
etc.
And every now and then repeat back what she is saying. For example, “That’s interesting. What I hear you saying is . . .” This way she will know you are listening and that you care about what she is saying.

There are many ways to let your wife know that you are trying to understand her and what she faces each day as the emotional center of your home. At every opportunity express appreciation for all she does. We know of one husband who gave his wife a special card, thanking her for every menial task she does around their home: from washing the clothes to doing the cooking, from taking the kids to school with lunches packed to helping them with their homework. There was a list of ten or fifteen items. The wife was so touched by this card that she said, “I’m sticking this in my Bible and I’m going to reread it often.”

As an understanding husband, always be “making the most of your time” (Ephesians 5:16).

That wife felt understood—at least in part. Be aware, however, that a woman’s need to feel you understand is insatiable. It will take constant effort on your part, and while you can never do it perfectly, every effort you make will tell her, “I love you.”

This husband’s letter sums it up beautifully: It has always been one of my goals to provide my wife with a safe environment in which she can be free to be the person God made her to be, and I hope that this is happening. She now freely identifies herself as someone who, just a couple of years ago, was “not happy,” but has put that behind her. I hope that I am understanding her better and being a better friend to her. We have a lot of challenges each week raising four kids, but we are a team, and I feel like we are working through all of it together, with God’s active presence and help.

SHE’LL FEEL YOU’RE TRYING TO UNDERSTAND HER WHEN . . .

• you listen and can repeat back what she said.

• you don’t try to “fix her problems” unless she specifically asks for a solution.

• you try to identify her feelings.

• you never dismiss her feelings, no matter how illogical they may seem to you.

• you say, “I appreciate your sharing that with me.”

• you don’t interrupt her when she’s trying to tell you how she feels.

• you apologize and admit you were wrong.

• you cut her some slack during her monthly cycle.

• you see something that needs to be done and you do it without a lot of hassle.

• you express appreciation for all she does: “Honey, I could never do your job.”

• you pray with her and for her.

CHAPTER TWELVE
PEACEMAKING—SHE WANTS
YOU TO SAY, “I’M SORRY”

W
hile in graduate school, I took a class that involved quite a bit of discussion of conceptual frameworks for certain ideas. There were only two or three of us men in the class—the rest were women, and all of them were feminists. One day the word
connectivity
came up for discussion. I noticed that the women literally brightened up, and a surge of energy seemed to run through the room. I addressed a question to the ladies: “What is connectivity to you?” They paused. They rummaged about a bit and then said things like, “Well, it’s to connect . . . to be one . . . to be soul mates.”

That was good for a start, but I wanted to know more. “Could you give me a working definition of this? After all, we’re all working on PhDs here. We need to be able to discuss and define this in specific terms.”

None of the women could. They admitted, “We can’t. We just know when it is present and we know when it’s not.”

“I see,” I said. Of course, I didn’t see but we had to move on to the next concept.

I never forgot that discussion, and I continued to work on defining
connectivity
as I entered the pastorate and especially as I began counseling married couples. Eventually, I came to a much better understanding of connectivity as I created the C-O-U-P-L-E acronym. As we have already seen in these chapters, there are many sides to connectivity. We have already looked at closeness, openness, and understanding. Obviously, all of these have a bearing on how connected a wife feels with her husband.

There is a fourth side to connectivity that we need to look at very carefully—
P
eacemaking. In some ways, it might be most important. If there is a rift, a conflict, even a sense of tension, you and your wife are not fully at peace, and, therefore, you can’t really feel connected. Without peace in your relationship, she doesn’t feel close, she doesn’t feel you’re open, and she certainly thinks you don’t understand. All this can be traced back to the tension or rift that has come between you.

Along with research done by academics on connectivity, I also studied the Scriptures and came upon a paradox. I learned that God intended for some conflict to exist in a marriage (see 1 Corinthians 7:3–4). Even secular research showed that the best marriage relationships have some conflict. It’s almost as if you need a degree of conflict to keep the passion there. The sequence seems to have the couple experience a misunderstanding; they have a minor argument, a bump of some kind. But as they work through this conflict, they deepen their understanding of each other and value and appreciate one another all the more as they reconcile the conflict.

If you are angry with your wife, even for “a brief moment,” she is “grieved in spirit” and “rejected,” and needs reassurance that you love her (Isaiah 54:5–8).

Obviously, when the sparks fly and a couple has a conflict, serious or minor, there is a risk. It can go one of two ways. Sparks can cause a controllable fire that heats the house and makes things warm and comfortable. Or sparks can set a wildfire that burns the house down. All married couples must realize that the sparks are going to be there. The question is, how will you control them?

I talked with one husband who confessed that he tried to motivate his wife to show him some respect by acting very unlovingly. He distanced himself from her. He closed off his spirit in anger. He disregarded her feelings. He argued his points to win and never reconciled. In short, he never made peace with her. He admitted to me, “I thought if I did all that, she’d start showing me a little more respect.” Then he put his head down on the table in despair and said, “But she divorced me. Until now I didn’t know why.”

HUSBAND AND WIFE CAN “WORK IT OUT”

As you have conflict, your wife will probably recognize it much sooner than you do. She can feel rejected by you in a way that you do not feel rejected by her (see Isaiah 54:6)
¹
; consequently, she wants to have things resolved between the two of you, and she will move toward you to get this done. As you go head to head and solve the problem, you become heart to heart. This is very precious to her. It’s a very powerful thing for your wife when she knows that the two of you are at peace.

Don’t refuse to make peace by running from conflict with your spouse. Conflict is not a sign you have a bad marriage. In fact, the Bible says that those who marry “will have trouble” (1 Corinthians 7:28). What kind of trouble did Paul have in mind? Earlier in the chapter, he lays down an excellent principle for dealing with conflict in marriage: “The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Corinthians 7:3–4).

In this passage Paul is giving advice to married couples in the church at Corinth. It was not uncommon in the first century for some believers to get the idea that a good Christian would abstain from sex completely, and apparently that was what was going on at Corinth. To correct this error, Paul encourages sexual relations between husband and wife, because this is the way not to fall into temptation and immorality outside of marriage (see v. 5).

It seems a little odd, however, when Paul says that the wife doesn’t have authority over her body and the husband does, and the husband doesn’t have authority over his body and the wife does. What does Paul mean? I believe he is laying out one of the great principles of the New Testament: because you have equal but differing needs, you will experience conflict. But you can work this out as partners. The husband should not act independently from his wife, and the wife should not act independently from her husband. A husband and wife should and can act together.
²

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21 NIV).

It is as if God said, “I’m going to allow for tension to exist in your marriage. I intend for you to work this out, because as you work out your tensions, your relationship is going to deepen and then deepen some more, and you’re going to continue to go through life working it out—back and forth, back and forth.”

“MY WIFE IS ALWAYS GETTING HISTORICAL”

As I talked with one man about his marriage, he told me that every time he and his wife got into a fight, she would get “historical.” To be sure I understood, I asked him if he actually meant “hysterical.” He said, “No, historical. She keeps dredging everything up from the past.”

Many wives are very good at getting historical. That’s why it doesn’t do a husband a lot of good to try to end a conflict by saying, “Let’s just drop it.” That is not how she thinks, and she will not drop it. She may let it go for the moment, but she will remember, and eventually she will start “rehearsing history” for her husband again.

Almost every husband I have ever talked with can share stories about his wife’s seemingly limitless capacity to remember who said what, where it happened, who was wearing what,
etc.
Your wife is wired to get historical, to bring things up that you’ve totally forgotten, to go full circle and get them resolved. She’s dredging them up so she can clear the air and feel love in the relationship. And you, the hapless husband who stands bewildered before her seemingly superhuman memory, will have to come to the point where you accept that this is her integrated personality in action and that she can’t “just drop it.”

Whenever she gets historical, she is trying to reconcile with you. She wants you to be open with her, and she’s trying to encourage understanding and peace between you. She wants to be sure you aren’t angry with her so that she can feel loved. She is not trying to provoke you, although it may sound that way as she delivers her historical diatribe. Husbands have a hard time believing this. The fellow who told me his wife often got historical was more than skeptical when I tried to explain that she was just trying to increase feelings of love between them.