Your husband, Not your child
Marriage can be tough, especially since we grow and mature at different rates and in different ways. When women are in our child-raising years, it can be so easy to begin to treat our husbands like they’re another one of our kids, even if we don’t want to. Recently a reader emailed me and asked how she can stop treating her husband like a child when she feels he continually behaves like one. Here are a few ideas that may help if you are struggling to respect or admire your husband at this phase of life. Please note that these ideas are intended for normal marriages that may be in a rut, not for abusive relationships.
First, create an image of him that he can live up to. Most people respond better to positive reinforcement than they do to criticism or negativity. For instance, a newlywed couple is just learning how to keep a house. The wife is a terrible cook, as she is just learning. But her husband goes all over town telling everyone what an amazing cook she is and how he loves it when she cooks for him. This encourages her to keep going, keep working at it, and over time she becomes the amazing cook that he said long beforehand that she was. Alternatively, a young couple gets married, and the husband tells everyone how bad her cooking is and how he would rather have his mother’s or he would rather go get fast food. The criticism discourages her so much that she quits cooking and just spends her time watching Netflix instead. She, too, lived up to what her husband told her and others that she was. We all underestimate the power of our words.
Find ways to praise your husband and build him up. Say things that you know COULD be true, even if they aren’t now. Not something outrageous, like, “You’re the best trash taker-outer ever,” if it’s been well-established that he’s terrible at doing that. But, find something else, like telling him what a great dad he is and how much the kids love spending time with him, what a difference he makes in their lives. Then give up on the trash and decide that will be your job or if your kids are old enough, assign the job to them. Then you won’t constantly be disappointed and frustrated and angry that he didn’t take out the trash.
Next, look for his s t rengths. Sometimes it takes many years and lots of work to discover your husband’s real strengths. As women we all have our pet things that we think our husbands should do or should not do. But many times if we step back and look at other things that he’s doing, we will realize that he is expressing love and respectability in all kinds of ways, just maybe not the ways that we want him to.
For instance, I love words of all kinds. As Chad has grown older, he’s gotten less likely to write me a sweet note than he was at 20 years old. As he aged, he started feeling sort of foolish writing love letters. (And, in his defense, he still gives me some of the best love notes ever on occasion.) I spent several years being hurt by this. Then one day I realized that he regularly washes my car for me. He mows our yard. He pulls the kids teeth because I hate it so much. He holds me close at night. And it dawned on me that there were small acts of love all around me that I was missing because he wasn’t doing the one or two things that I thought he should be doing.
Take a close look at your life and look for those small things that matter more than you are probably acknowledging. I’m saying this to you as someone who spent years blind to all of those little things. Once I opened my eyes, I loved and respected my husband more than ever, and I saw so many ways that he sacrifices that I had never noticed before because I was hung up on one or two issues.
I believe that most men want to please their wives. I know it can be frustrating to be married, but don’t get discouraged just because love doesn’t always come easy. There’s probably no other area of your life where you are more often called to love like Christ. We must be patient with each other-- we are all just sinners who need a Savior.