Dr. Melody Rhode often uses a psycho-neurological term to describe a man’s reluctance to change: FUNCTIONAL FIXEDNESS. Men don’t normally change if what they’ve been doing seems to be working for them. When a woman allows her husband to treat her with disrespect, he has no motivation to change — and so it’s unlikely he ever will.

Melody notes, “There’s a simple question I ask wounded women who seek help to endure belittling or degrading treatment from their man: ‘Why does your husband treat you badly?’ Answer: because he can.” This is not, in any way, to blame a woman for the abuse but to develop a new blueprint for a different future.

Melody continues. “If what he’s doing is working for him, why change? He needs a compelling reason to change, and it needs to be more compelling than your unhappiness or private misery with the situation.”

I would think that a God-fearing man would be motivated to change simply by understanding that his actions hurt you. But I’m also a realist. Some of you may be married to a man who doesn’t much care if his actions hurt you, as long as he gets what he wants. In such cases, allowing the behavior to continue while complaining about it won’t change anything. It’s not your pain that motivates him but his pain. You have to be willing to create an environment in which the status quo becomes more painful than the experience of positive change.

Here’s the trap I’ve seen too many women fall into: a woman keeps expressing to her husband how he is doing something (or not doing something) that is hurting her. Even after several such conversations, he doesn’t change —or he’ll change for a few days and then go back to his old habits, at which point the wife complains again.

Still, no long-term change. The wife reads a book or attends a seminar and decides she needs to find a better way to communicate so she can get her message across, but even after this, there’s no permanent change. Her error is assuming that she’s not getting through. In point of fact, she is getting through to her husband—he may fully understand and be completely aware of her pain, but he’s not motivated by her pain. If he likes the marriage as it is, he’ll put up with an occasionally disagreeable conversation now and then.

In such cases, spouses need to make a serious evaluation. There was a point in “Jenny’s” marriage when she realized, based on her and her husband’s parents’ health history, that she and “Mike” could be married for sixty years. At the time, Jenny had been married for just fifteen years, but that left, potentially, another forty-five years of being together — which also meant another forty-give years of a situation that Jenny wasn’t sure she could live with.

“There is no scenario in my life plan in which I want divorce — none,” Jenny told me. “At the end of my life, my fervent hope and determination is to be, unreservedly, a one-man woman. But I also know enough not to overestimate my patience. I could put up with some disappointments at the time, but was I willing to live with this for another forty-five years? At that point, I felt I needed to be more honest about some struggles and more up-front about making a change. It created some discomfort for a season as I stopped pretending that everything was OK — but was a season of discomfort worth changing the course of our marriage for the next forty-years? Without question!”

Without nagging and without pretty recriminations (withholding sex, the silent treatment, a critical spirit, and so forth), Jenny gently but forcefully made her husband see that as long as he acted the way he did, their marriage was going to suffer in specific ways — ways that affected him. It was only when Mike started feeling his own pain that he was shaken out of his functional fixedness enough to change his behavior.

I believe Jenny makes an important point: be wary of over-estimating your willingness to live with a glaring hurt or a gaping need. Don’t pretend that Satan won’t exploit it or that you won’t be tempted by another man who happens to be strongest exactly where your husband is weakest. If, like Jenny, your ideal life plan leaves no room for divorce, you must honestly accept your weaknesses and be willing to create a climate in which your spouse will be motivated by his pain. This is a courageous and healthy movement toward your spouse and toward preserving and strengthening your marriage, and it is an act of commitment, not rebellion.

All this requires a very specific application based on your spouse’s personality, so I can’t give you “five steps to overcome functional fixedness” here — but you’ll receive plenty of ideas and suggestions as we touch on various topics throughout this book. [This is a good reason to obtain this book.] At this point, it’s enough to say that if merely communicating your hurt isn’t solving the problem, you’re most likely dealing with a case of functional fixedness, and you’ll need to be strong to address that issue.

Some women fall into the trap of failing to speak up for fear of losing their man; they don’t want to “rock the boat,” even though it appears that the boat is headed toward a waterfall. But this passive acceptance makes it more likely that the husband will stray; he won’t respect his wife for putting up with his poor behavior, and this attitude will only reinforce his disrespectful behavior. Sadly, many women think their husband’s anger is the great enemy of their security, but, if fact, weakness and the corresponding relational boredom pose a far more potent threat.

If you can stand strong and secure in your identity and in your relationship with Christ, courageously making it clear how you will and will not be treated, you will be amazed to see how to respect and show for yourself rubs off on your husband.

Things Must Change
Here’s the male insider’s view, right at the start: you have more influence over your husband than you realize. When you are a woman of respect, the last thing your husband wants is to lose you. If he things he can heave you and his aberrant behavior, he’ll take both. But if the day comes when he knows you won’t simply turn a blind eye to what he’s doing, when he thinks he might even lose you if he continues down the path he’s walking, he’s going to be shaken out of his functional fixedness and at least consider making changes.

…Dr Melody Rhode sees the threat of a husband’s losing his wife as perhaps the greatest possible motivator for a husband. Of course, we have to place this within the context of a covenantal, committed marriage. The Bible is very specific and very limiting regarding what constitutes an acceptable divorce. Discontentment, seeming incompatibility, and mere displeasure don’t qualify! Melody points out, “A woman’s power needs to be surrendered to God and used for his purposes, not our own.”

She also stresses, however, that most women, because of our culture, don’t realize the power they have to move their husbands. “They feel powerless because of their sex,” she observes, “and this has resulted in a lot of pent-up anger, frustration, and even desperation.” As your brother in Christ, I’m encouraging you to be bold, courageous, and strong. Use the natural and very spiritual influence and role that God has designed for you to move the man in your life.

… Our culture in general — even Christian culture — is on a long slide toward passivity that completely goes against who God made us to be.

Let me be blunt: hope is not a strategy. Merely “wishing” that your husband would change, merely “wanting” your marriage to be different, won’t do anything. The problem is that some Christians spiritualize wishing — we call it “praying.” Please understand, I’m not knocking prayer; I’m challenging a misconception about prayer, namely, that we can merely voice our displeasure and expect our world and our relationships to be transformed. True biblical prayer is about much, much more than that. It involves receiving our marching orders and then acting on them.

A good marriage doesn’t happen by accident, and a good marriage isn’t maintained by accident. I’ve never written a book by accident, and you can’t build a business by accident. These endeavors require deliberate choices and much perseverance. When you start acting instead of merely wishing, when you begin taking initiative instead of simply feeling sorry for yourself, you become an active woman, and active women mirror the active God who made them.

Active God, Active Women
Genesis 1 provides our initial glimpse of who God is. The first thing God wants us to know is that he is an extraordinarily active God. In Genesis 1 there are thirty-eight active verbs describing what God does: he creates, he speaks, he separates, he calls, he blesses, he gives, and much more — all in just one chapter.

Then — and this is the key — he tells the woman and the man to do the same: “God blessed them [male and female] and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground’” (Genesis 1:28).

God made you, as a woman, to rule in this world, to subdue it, to act according to his image. Sin begins with sluggishness, despair, and despondency. People give up on their marriages, give up on prayer, give up on their churches, give up on their kids, and eventually even give up on themselves. They say, “It’s no use,” and start to sulk instead of painstakingly remaking their marriage — simply because their first (or even tenth) attempt failed.

This may sound like a hard word, but readers of my previous books know I’m not one to shy away from that. Your marriage is what you make it. The relationship you have is the direct result of what you’ve put into it, and in many cases, a marriage can rise only to the level of your courage. Initial romantic intensity is unearned; it seems to fall on us out of nowhere. But marriage has to be built stone by stone. We have to make deliberate choices; we have to be active and confront the weaknesses we wee in ourselves and in each other.

The above article comes from the GREAT book, SACRED INFLUENCE… What a Man Needs from His Wife to be the Husband She Wants, by Gary Thomas, published by Zondervan, www.zondervan.com. There was so much more in this chapter and in the entire book that we would have liked to include in this article. But you’ll just need to find a way to obtain the book to see what else Gary Thomas has to say on this subject (and others). You’ll be glad you did!

In the pages of this book, you’ll find a fresh perspective to help you understand your husband: the view of the marriage relationship through a man’s eyes. Thomas gives you insider information on how men think, feel, and can truly be motivated. Does a heartbreaking marital problem—a hair-trigger temper, Internet addiction, irresponsibility, emotional distance —feel like an impossible roadblock to you? This book doesn’t gloss over issues like these but faces them head-on with a solid, positive advice.

Sacred Influence shows how God can bless you with a soul-filling intimacy as you and your husband are shaped into the people he intends you to be. This is a WONDERFUL book that we HIGHLY recommend for you to read. It really gives a new fresh insight into the male mind, along with spiritual help in seeing this from a Godly perspective. It talks about being a strong, godly woman that glorifies God, living out God’s plan for your life, and yet also being a true helpmeet for your husband.

But how do you get past the walls that have been built up between you and your spouse? It’s not usually something you can do overnight. Many different things went into building that wall, and it will take a lot of effort to dismantle them. But it’s well worth the work. Plus, God tells us that perseverance is a virtue that we are to strive after.

There are many verses in the Bible that encourages us to persevere even when we want to give up. Among them are:

“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.” (James 1:12)

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9)

So, to help you in this mission, we discovered an article that might be a good beginning (or help you further) in this mission. It is written by Richard Fitzgibbons, and the name of the article is, “The Emotionally Distant Spouse.” It even contains a self-test so you can:

“Evaluate your self-giving in your marriage and that of your spouse.” You can “then try to identify common causes of this weaknesses in your spouse and in yourself.”

To read this article and take the self-test, please click onto the link below to the web site Marital Healing.com:

• THE EMOTIONALLY DISTANT SPOUSE

— ALSO —

April Motl says the following about emotional detachment in marriage:

“A lot can happen between the ‘I do’ at the altar and the years that follow.  We can end up married to someone yet emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically disengaged. I have come to believe that one primary problem seems to sit at the root of most couples who feel disengaged. I call it the ‘full plate’ phenomenon. When your spouse (or you) has something that puts them emotionally, mentally, physically or spiritually on overload something else has to be shut off in life — and that something else often becomes your marriage.”

To find out more, read:

• ARE YOU DISCONNECTED FROM YOUR SPOUSE?

If you have additional tips you can share to help others in this area of marriage, or you want to share requests for prayer and/or ask others for advice, please “Join the Discussion” by adding your comments below.

As I listened, I realized the truth of what he’d said. She had tried to tell him. When their son was born, she hadn’t wanted to go back to work immediately, but he pressured her, telling her that they needed her income. She nagged some and later grew severely depressed, but he didn’t think her depression had anything to do with him or with being away from their son.

Actually, that wife had pushed every button she had available to make him listen to her pain and anger. But he was oblivious to her inner cries. He worked two jobs so he wasn’t home much—but more importantly, even when he was home, he failed her emotionally.

Somewhere in time, she decided that the pain of divorce was more bearable than the hurt of being in the same house when they were emotionally at opposite ends of the earth. So she walked out. What she did wasn’t right, but I can understand it. It was probably a last desperate attempt to get her husband’s attention. She got it, all right, but it came too late.

I wonder how many broken relationships are due to a similar scenario. I wonder how many men are in the process this very moment of distancing their wives by failing to understand their needs—the need to be listened to, to have feelings and emotions validated by their husband’s concentrated attention and understanding.

It’s not that men don’t need emotional support and intimacy—they do, of course. I know some men who have as great a need for relating on an emotional, feeling, subjective level as any woman. They are often the counselors, those others turn to when in trouble, the pastor-shepherds. But as my wife Carole and I have listened to couples, we find that in the average marriage, it’s generally a matter of degree. And the women’s need usually seems greater. It is she who most often longs for soul-to-soul communication and who feels like she never quite has that desire met by her spouse.

This incident appeared in a recent article [in Readers Digest Magazine, "Why Husbands Won't Talk"]:

Judy, an artist, was worried abut preparations for an exhibition, and started to tell Cliff, her husband. She wanted his support and sympathy.

Instead, Cliff fired off instructions: “One, get all the artists together. Two, call your accountant—the expenses may be deductible. Three, check with the bank to see how much money you have. Four, contact the P.R. people.”

Judy felt rejected, and thought to herself: “Cliff doesn’t care how I feel. He just wants to get me off his back.”

Cliff believed he was being supportive-he had given her his best advice. But Judy was seeking emotional rapport, not problem solving.

Carole and I can relate to that! I have had to work on intimacy in communication all of our married life. It probably has to do with me being that logical, factual, objective kind of guy. I have to admit that by nature, I am a concealer of my feelings. In fact, if one side of a scale represented the ability to express feelings and the other side represented the need to conceal those feelings, Carole and I would probably balance the scales pretty well.

According to most marriage counselors, concealment is more often a trait in men, and it stems from various factors such as background, cultural expectations, perceptions of manliness, and personality. This tendency to conceal has drastic implications. James Collier says that most men think it unmanly even to admit that they have a problem—much less request aid:

Men in America feel that they ought to be able to deal with anything that comes along, and it’s an admission of failure if they’re having trouble. Some men would rather fail at their marriage or with their children than admit that something is wrong and seek a solution.

… Says marriage specialist Goldstein: “Men aren’t supposed to have sensitive, warm feelings or feelings of tenderness for the people around them—much less express them.” It is like the story of the old Vermont farmer 40 years married, who said, “I love Sarah Jane so much that sometimes it’s all I can do to keep from telling her.”

Communication patters: Spell them d-i-f-f-e-r-e-n-t.

• They’re different in the number of and reasons for questions. A revealer is often full of questions and sees them as a way to maintain a conversation, thinking “If I don’t ask the other person won’t know that I care.” Questions represent intimacy and caring.

But not to a concealer! Now questions can represent meddling. The concealer may be thinking, “Oh, no, you don’t! You can’t pry that information out of me. If I want to tell you something, I’ll tell you—without all your questions.”

• They’re different, too, in the nature of responses to communication. A revealer may use encouraging sounds such as “uh-huh” and “hmmm” to encourage the other person —and then feel ignored because the concealer utters so few of these acknowledging sounds. When I listen silently, Carole sometimes asks, “Honey, are you there?”

They’re different in the use of what some call “oneness” words such as you and we. A revealer may use many more of such words, as well as conversational bridges such as “Please go on —would you give me another example? …”

Can you identify yourself? As I’ve said, I tend to be the concealer, and—being logical as well—I have to say that often, logical men have logical reasons for concealment! I read of a group of men who were asked their reasons for not talking. Several of them gave fairly logical reason, such as simply not being in a talkative mood, or being tired and not wanting to expend energy talking, even wanting to protect the wife when she was tired and agitated and her emotional tank was near “empty.”

But others in the group answered in ways that indicated their concealment should not be accepted at face value. Listen to these reasons some men gave:

(1) Silence helps me avoid differences of opinion. I grew up in a family that rarely expressed strong feelings. So talking is tough, especially when I know what I have to say isn’t what my wife wants to hear.

(2) Silence protects me. Sometimes I don’t want to talk to my wife about certain things because I’m afraid she will use them against me.

(3) Silence maintains a balance of attachment and freedom that feels comfortable in our relationship. Sometimes I need closeness, but other times I need distance. I’m most content with our marriage when there’s a natural ebb and flow in our interaction.

(4) Silence precludes heated explosions. If I don’t shoot off words, I’m less likely to catch crossfire or have to pick up debris when the battle ceases.

(5) When something is bothering me, I don’t talk because my wife tends to overreact and make matters worse. The last thing I want is someone bouncing off the walls in anger or else sniveling about it.

Did you notice a similarity in these five reasons for silence? It would appear that most of these reasons are based on self protection or comfort, not on the intimacy of the marriage or the needs of the wife.

Now of course there are times when silence is good. But to constantly conceal our feelings is bound to stifle the intimacy and closeness that our marriages demand (and most wives need) in order for us to become truly one.

One counselor puts it this way: Wives think, “The marriage is working as long as we can talk about it.” Husbands think, “The relationship is not working if we have to keep talking about it.”

So we’re different. So one of us doesn’t talk much about feelings, and the other shares freely. Can anything be done? Family counselor Norm Wright says,

A woman does not have to resign herself to living with an un-expressive male. Becoming fatalistic is not the answer, and I’m not talking about divorcing him either. Don’t listen if someone tells you “Don’t be so concerned about men not expressing their feelings. That’s just the way they are!” Men may tend to be that way, but they can change. Challenges or reproaches do not work. Carefully worded invitations can work.

Men do respond initially to questions which elicit factual responses. It’s easier for a man to tell his wife what he does at work than how he feels about it. He can tell her how he did at events or school when he was growing up easier than how he feels about what he did. But starting with the facts is an introduction to the feelings.

But the revealer must be cautioned: Mr. Wright also says that a man may finally open up to a woman only to find that what he reveals is discounted, shared with others, disbelieved, ridiculed, rejected, and even laughed at. Remember: safety, acceptance, and support are essential if a man is going to let down the bridge from his castle. He wants what he shares to be used for his welfare, not against him. Trust is a major issue.

The above article comes from the great book, Opposites Attack, by Jack and Carole Mayhall, published by NavPress, www.navpress.com. This book is aimed at turning your differences into opportunities and helping polar opposites turn into the best of friends. As they often say, “different doesn’t mean wrong — it just means different in the way you approach life. This is such a practical book and really gives a lot of helpful insights into how to get along better with each other. What’s great about it is the fact that Jack and Carole take their own differences and their own opposite ways of approaching life and help you to see, as you look into their lives, how you can turn your diversity around to HELP your marriage rather than hurt it. We HIGHLY recommend this book!

There are ways couples interact that hurt the bond of their relationship. Pursuing and withdrawing is a common way couples relate that often leaves them far apart from each other. Many couples are stuck in a rigid pursue-withdraw cycle of interacting in an attempt to be seen and understood where one partner pursues and, in response, the other withdraws. The more the pursuer pursues, the further the withdrawer pulls away and shuts down.

In the pursue-withdraw cycle, both partners are unable to share what is going on in their heart; they are only able to share their anger, frustration and hurt.

The pursuer feels the loss of his or her partner’s attention, care, or concern and so searches out him or her with anger, frustration, and hurt. The pursuer feels that if he or she does not pursue, he or she will not be seen or understood. Wives, who are usually the pursuers, often say, “I nag because I feel he will not hear me. He’s just not there emotionally. He can’t shut me out like that.”

The with-drawer, overwhelmed by the pursuer’s emotion, feels alienated and helpless in pleasing his or her partner. And so, in protection, the withdrawer pulls away. Husbands, who are often withdrawers, say they are left feeling devalued, disrespected, and unworthy. Unable to calm and soothe their wife, they withdraw to find peace.

Withdrawers frequently walk on eggshells and skirt around issues that may trigger displeasure in their spouse. Oftentimes withdrawers say that attempting to get their point across is not worth the hassle, because they feel that their spouse would not understand them anyway.

The Impact of the Cycle on Your Marriage Bond: When a spouse is busy pursuing or putting a lot of energy into withdrawing, he or she does not have the emotional space to hold his or her partner’s perspective and needs. Couples begin to see each other as unavailable and inconsiderate. They say of each other, “My husband (or wife) just doesn’t understand me. He (or she) isn’t there for me and no longer cares about how I feel.”

Sharing one’s heart freely begins to feel dangerous. Couples say, “There’s no way my spouse would understand me. I learned not to put my heart out there. Risking that would just mean I’d be hurt again.” When husbands and wives emotionally disconnect, their relationship no longer feels safe or secure. They no longer turn toward each other for support or comfort.

What Triggers Your Pursue-Withdraw Cycle: Something happens, and suddenly you see your spouse in a different light. You perceive your spouse to no longer be the kind, thoughtful, loving person you married but rather the person who does not care about you or value your heart. And although you might not doubt your commitment or your love, you, in the moment, dislike your spouse.

We all have had a time when what our spouse did meant to us that they didn’t care. And when you feel your spouse doesn’t care, or is not there for you, your cycle is usually triggered. Too often differences are interpreted as “You don’t value me.”

Mary and Joe are very different from each other. Mary is a night owl and Joe is an early bird. Joe interpreted Mary’s inability to fall asleep at 9:00 P.M. as uncaring and disrespectful. Mary viewed Joe’s request for her to come to bed at 9:00 P.M. as unreasonable and insensitive to her need to relax after a long day at work. Their difference in internal body clocks is not seen as that but rather as the inability of the other to be sensitive and caring. Their differences become a threat to their close attachment bond.

When differences are seen as damaging to the relationship, you and your spouse judge one another as being the enemy rather than friends. Most of the time it was the differences that drew you and your spouse together in the first place. You were outgoing and bold, and your spouse was quiet and gentle. After hurts, disappointments, and inability to talk about the complications and difficulties that arise as a result of being different, the differences in your spouse change from positive to negative.

A connection comes when you and your spouse are able to sit together and risk talking openly. Don’t let the difficulties that differences bring trigger your rigid cycle of criticism, blame, defensiveness, and withdrawal. It is in this cycle that you and your spouse lose sight of each other’s value.

Sharing Heart needs and Longings: As a couple, it is important to talk about the needs, hurts, longings, and feelings of your heart in an open and honest way. In this way you and your spouse can find a path to each other instead of pursuing and withdrawing. Instead of this openness, all too many couples chose the disconnecting path. Or they chose to communicate in ineffective ways.

Expressing your needs and longings to your spouse can be difficult. Some people don’t know what they feel or need. Others feel that if their spouse really loved them, he or she would know what they needed without having to tell them. This expectation is very damaging to the relationship because it keeps your heart’s needs and longings hidden and your pain of being alone heightened. It tempts you to up the ante and angrily pursue your spouse to keep guessing what you need. It also sets up your spouse to withdraw in frustration, because no matter what he or she does, it is just not good enough.

If you are a withdrawer, it will be important for you to share openly and honestly your feelings and needs. Risk being emotionally available to your spouse. It might be important to admit, “I can’t come close to you and be there for you when you are angry and criticizing me.” In this way, you can allow yourself to be there for your spouse in a more open way.

If you are a pursuer, learn to express your heart rather than just getting angry or criticizing. Reach beyond your anger and harsh words to a softer place. From that place, express your longings and fears and ask for your spouse to be there for you. Interactions then won’t revolve around your anger and disappointment. You will both come together around the tender longings of your heart.

Don’t be afraid to admit that sometimes you don’t know what to do. Say something like, “I care for you, but I don’t always know what to say or do.” This invites your spouse to share what they need from you. In this way you are connecting in honesty and warmth instead of anger and defensiveness.

Emotions and Hearts: Couples don’t always know what to do with each other’s emotions. Husbands are taught to buck up and not feel. And wives don’t always know how to express their feelings in a manner that their husbands can hear, understand, and respect. Often spouses fear that their emotions will be found unacceptable or that they will be thought of as weak. How you and your spouse deal with your emotions will be very important to your bond. … So what are you supposed to do with your spouse’s emotions? Try listening.

Listen to your spouse’s emotions with an empathetic attitude. Listen not only with your logic but with your heart as well. Aim to understand your spouse’s heart. To do that you often have to listen beyond the words. You don’t always have to find a solution, fix what is wrong, or solve the problem. Often spouses can’t just listen to their partner’s heart without being defensive, reading into the conversation more than what was intended, or being hurt by what is said. Learn to say, “That must have been difficult.” “Sounds like you had a rough day.” “I would be disappointed if that kept happening to me too.”

Both husbands and wives long to be heard, understood, and respected. Most often your spouse comes to you to share his or her heart and life. Listening is the most powerful way to show your spouse that you understand and accept him or her.

Reconnecting Your Hearts: It will be important for you and your spouse to emotionally reconnect as soon as possible after being hurt and hooked into your cycle. Remember, disconnecting and not talking for days or sweeping the whole encounter under the rug and coming back together to take care of household tasks is not a reconnection of hearts, only of schedules. Unresolved hurts and issues add strain and stress to your haven of safety, and soon you and your spouse learn not to turn toward each other but rather away.

HOW SHOULD YOU CONNECT AFTER BEING HURT? Remember four things:

• First, God was wise when he told us not to let the sun go down on our hurts, especially anger. Turn your hearts toward each other as soon as you are able. Before the end of the day is God’s preference.

• Second, come back together and acknowledge what happened. Understand your as well as your spouse’s part of the cycle. Admit to your role in keeping the cycle going. Remember, your bond is more valuable than your being right.

• Third, share your hurts and needs rather than your anger and frustration. Remember you both value the relationship. Neither wants to hurt or be hurt.

• Fourth, when all is said and done, touch and talk to each other in a soft tone of voice, sharing encouraging words. This can be very powerful. The touch of your spouse is physiologically soothing and calming. It assures both of you that the bond is safe and sure.

CREATING CONNECTIONS: There are many ways to build the attachment bond between you and your spouse. Here are three ways that are effective:

• First, pray together daily. Beginning and ending your day in the presence of the Lord not only turns each of your hearts toward each other, it turns your hearts toward the safest place you’ll ever know: in your heavenly Father’s presence. Couples who pray together stay together, because by praying together they’re strengthening the bond between them in the presence of God. That’s powerful.

• Second, believe the best of intentions of your spouse. Your spouse isn’t always out to get you, even though it seems that way at times. You long to be loved and valued, and so does your spouse. Believe that. Be there for each other as God refines and molds each of you into the image of Christ.

• Third, risk doing things differently. Open up your heart and learn how to relate to your spouse in a way that draws you together.

When Your Relationship Is a Safe Place: It will be of great value that the emotional attachment bond between you and your souse becomes close, safe, trustworthy, and predictable. If your marriage is perceived to be a haven of safety, you and your spouse will be a resource for each other and able to withstand the pressures and pains of marriage and life.

But a close attachment bond doesn’t just happen. It is over the course of time and experiences, as each of you interact and respond to each other, that your bond will be nurtured and strengthened. In this way you will experience your relationship as a safe place where your heart can safely be shared and cherished.

The above article came from the book, The Complete Marriage Book: Collected Wisdom from Leading Marriage Experts compiled by David and Jan Stoop, published by Fleming H. Revell. This book contains articles that talk about everything from in-laws to finances, romance to childrearing, spiritual growth to intimacy and more. It is a wealth of collective wisdom from authors such as Dr Norman Wright, Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, Roger and Becky Tirabassi, Gary and Carrie Oliver, Dave and Claudia Arp, Paul and Jan Meier, Greg and Erin Smalley and more.

This particular chapter, in it’s edited form, which was entitled “Creating a Safe and Close Connection” was written by Sharon Hart Morris. There are a lot of illustrations that couldn’t be included in this article that can be found in this book.

A very important part of combating problems is reaching out to hear and understand the other person. So often when we argue we want to explain our side of things so fervently that we discount what the other person is feeling and what their reasoning is behind their actions. We often forget to take into consideration that their approach is much different than ours. Listening is a good step forward towards understanding. And understanding is a good step forward towards working through a conflict.

We wish we could give your husband the ability to KNOW what you’re feeling so that it might help him better see your frustration and what’s motivating your words and actions. But this article, written by David Hawkins (from the book, Men Don’t Get It But they Can), may help you better understand HIS reasonings a little better.

Our prayer is that after reading it, you’ll see things a little clearer and with the Lord’s help you will find ways to build bridges between you and your spouse to walk TOWARDS dealing with conflicts in a healthier way. (Also note that after this article there is a link to another article you can read on the same subject.) Here’s what David Hawkins wrote:

Randy storms out of the kitchen and hides himself in the newspaper. Why? Why won’t he stand before Carla and address the problem directly, searching for a solution that can be beneficial to both of them? This would give both of them space to be individuals and yet live in wonderful harmony with each other. But that did not happen. Instead, more bricks were stacked on the wall between them, leaving each to suffer in isolation.

I suspect Randy felt a number of emotions:

He felt threatened. His wife was not happy with his performance around the house even though he saw himself as a diligent, hard-working man. She poked at his ego, and he used his well-rehearsed tactic of withdrawal to cope with threats.

He felt angry. He felt that his wife’s requests were unreasonable. He really didn’t think the problem was that serious. Of course, this is denial on his part, for the problem remains, and tomorrow is not likely to be any different.

He felt confused. What was the big deal? In denial, he convinced himself that this was her problem. If he ignored her, maybe the problem would just go away. But in his heart, he wondered if he needed to be more assertive and face her with his concerns.

He felt uncertain and afraid. What if she persisted with her demands? Would he be forced to change? What would he be required to change? He was content with his routines are not particularly interested in new challenges, especially on the home front.

He felt sad and rejected. Sitting alone in the living room was not his idea of a fun evening. He wanted true contact and intimacy with his wife, and this was no way to get it. He knew that he would most likely be stubborn and wait for her to make the first overture to him. They were in for a cold, silent evening.

Many struggles will drain a couples’ energy. Round-robin fights appear to be so simple but go on and on. Conversations that start out clear end up muddy. “What was it we were fighting about?” so many couples ask once the smoke has finally cleared.

Keeping focused in the midst of such turmoil is hard. Discussing issues in a productive way requires serious effort. Encounters sometimes degenerate into power struggles that culminate in hurt feelings and the loss of intimacy. How can we create real change?

As you begin this journey, the trail ahead may appear perilous. The path is unfamiliar. Trust that you will find the truth and it will make you free. Trust that God will provide wisdom for the journey ahead. Solomon confirms that “if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD” (Proverbs 2:4). If you look and listen, you will find the right books, the right friends, and the right teachers to help you take one important step at a time.

Paths are never straight and easy. Life has many starts, stops, twists, and turns. Plan on them. As you begin to acknowledge the truth abut your marriage and about how you and your partner relate to each other, you may fumble about with new behaviors. You may try to be assertive only to slip back into passivity. You may try to confront irresponsible behavior only to revert to snide comment and passive-aggressive tactics. You are not traversing a smooth and easy trail.

As you learn to listen more carefully to yourself and to God, and as you let go of the lies that hinder you, the best path will emerge before you —one step at a time, one moment at a time.

The above article came from the book, Men Just Don’t Get it—But They Can! written by David Hawkins, published by Harvest House www.harvesthousepublishers.com.

Dr Hawkins is a licensed clinical psychologist. He is the author of several books including “See Dick and Jane Grow Up” and a series of booklets titled “Your Pocket Therapist.”

HOW NOT TO FIX YOUR HUSBAND’S PROBLEM

Which of us doesn’t feel the need to “fix” what we consider to broken or off-kilter when it comes to our spouse? And sometimes it can be a good thing to “help” our spouse when they’re doing something that causes problems in our partnership in marriage. That’s part of the benefit of being in a marital team. But sometimes our spouse doesn’t take our “wonderful” advice in a positive way.

Could there be times when it’s best to stand back and accept and give grace to our spouse over that which we can’t “make” them change?

The following article from the web site Troubledwith.com addresses that dilemma. We’ll take you to their web site to read it. You can just “arrow” back afterwards to return to this web site and even make a comment that could help others in the section provided below if you desire to do so.

To read the article, How Not to Fix Your Husband:

CLICK HERE

You’ll need to obtain the book for a fuller picture of what the author is trying to say, but this might at least give you some idea, which could help you on your journey to understand why this occurs. And it might help you to consider that how your husband conducting himself in your marriage may be more complicated than just a narcissistic way of living. That could be the case with some men—but certainly not all. And we dare say, not the majority from what we’ve seen.

We believe that many men (and many women) who seem disconnected in their marriages, are living that way because of what they experienced, and how they interpreted life to work for them, before marriage. They aren’t even aware that they’re living their lives from that vantage point. We believe this book will help you to look behind that behavior and then help you further, as you prayerfully consider how to approach changing things for the future. Here are a few insights, from Paul and Sandy Coughlin, for your consideration:

• A culture at Odds with Masculinity: We could devote an entire book to examples of how our culture is confused (at best) about what a man is and vilifies (at worst) what it does know. [But here’s a shortened example] …A study that compared gender stereotypes common in the 1970s to those widespread in the 1990s found that while views of women have improved, views of men have plummeted. Women are characterized as “intelligent, logical, independent, adventurous, dependable, and skilled at relationships.” Men? “Jealous, moody, fussy, temperamental, deceptive, narrow-minded, and heedless of consequences.” The report characterized this view of men as “negative masculinity.”

…What’s the primary premise behind our society’s denigration of males? Why do so few find it wrong and unacceptable to demoralize men? The root idea: Men are a serious problem that must be fixed, not a gender to be appreciated. Men are not okay as men. Masculinity, in and of itself, is negative.

We as a culture have undergone extended therapy at the hands of social engineers, media presentations, and dedicated activists. The script men and women followed before the social revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s was flawed’ however, rather than addressing the flaws in order to right them, much of society began instead to reverse or invert the flaws. Human value and dignity is about all people being of equal worth; we needed to embrace and enact positive change in the ways women were viewed and treated, not say, “Men have had the upper hand and abused it; now it’s women’s turn to rule and degrade.”

• The most shaming and heartbreaking message is that a man is disposable. Maureen Dowd’s, Are Men Necessary? would be humorous if it weren’t for her deadly serious attack upon manhood. The main thesis of Peggy Drexler and Linden Gross’s Raising Boys Without Men is that boys are best raised by women; not only are fathers expendable, they’re detrimental to the rearing of boys. TV sitcoms have perfected the image of men as naturally incompetent husbands and fathers, buffoons either to be set straight or cast aside.

• By contrast, the record shows how essential men are to children and to society in general. The largest predictive factor in whether a child will graduate from high school, attend college, avoid crime, reject drugs, or become an unwed parent before 18 is the presence of a father in the child’s life. According to a recent Health and Human Services report, “Fathers play a unique role in fostering the well-being of their children, not only through providership, protection and guidance, but also through the way that they nurture the next generation.” Yet there’s a huge catch: “A father’s involvement with his children … is powerfully contingent on the mother’s attitude” toward him.

• When a man does not feel needed, something in him dies. Even an emotionally healthy man turns passive and loses energy.

• John Gray, author of one of the bestselling books on relationships, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, explains how women during dating speak the following unspoken language loud and clear. “We need you. Your power and strength can bring us great fulfillment, filling a void deep within our being. Together we could live in great happiness.”

This unspoken message motivated their man to become larger and more attractive during dating. But after marriage, the usual challenges set in, made worse by “Nice Guy” tendencies to avoid conflict, which to their wives appears like they’re trying to avoid responsibilities. This is true, though it is not their original motivation. He no longer feels wanted. He feels like a big fat problem. He may feel this way because he’s been told so.

• The Psychology of Passivity: Given our cultural predicament, the “Nice Guy” disease affects every man differently, worse for some than for others. Some men are more predisposed to passive thought and behavior, and it’s not rocket science figuring out why. Their lives are over-influenced by fear and related emotions like anxiety, which seal up the heart and prevent the sharing of emotions and the interchange of love. The usual suspects for this psychological tendency include childhood abuse neglect, and abandonment.

• If passivity haunts your man, know that he wasn’t “born this way.” It’s not his natural personality type, and it shouldn’t be mistaken for being reserved. A reserved man may take longer than others to share his feelings, make decisions, and engage socially, but in the end he does express himself, make his will known, and connect with others. Though he’s cautious, he still proceeds. A passive man, fear-frozen, is (and sees himself as) acted upon, rather than actively participating in life.

• Abused kids harbor a pervasive sense that they are an inferior sub-species, children of a lesser God. When you believe you are inferior to others, you invite fear into the deepest parts of your heart. Men usually don’t even know that they’ve done this, but somewhere along the way, they did, and they’ve been committed to fear ever since. Writes Dr. Laura: “It is terrible to have been hurt, tortured, molested, abandoned, ignored… or exposed to other demoralizing or dehumanizing behaviors. For anyone to minimize that truth is somewhere between ignorant and insensitive.” And when a young boy undergoes such treatment, it creates a “sick parallel universe …for you, one your real world with everyone else. Your options and possibilities will appear severely constricted, and understandably, you flounder.”

Christian Nice Guys with this background are still sinners. They’re not some special case where their sin doesn’t smell bad because they had a tough childhood. But it should be clear by now why Christian Nice Guys drag more baggage through life. As the social philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm once observed, “The scars left from the child’s defeat in the fight against irrational authority are to be found at the bottom of every neurosis.”

• The passive man assumes that others (including you) possess more power than he does or ever will. He’s prone to depend on you and others to regulate and arrange his world for him. As you’ve probably observed and experienced, this makes him undependable and irresponsible. He believes that, regardless of what he does, outside forces determine his future; this is fatalism. He has disregarded the biblical wisdom that if a man plans, organizes, and takes action, he improves the quality of his life. He feels inadequate to handle his life; he’s convinced he has little or influence in achieving what he wants and needs, so even though he’s dependent on others, he’s resentful of them as well.

• When faced with life’s challenges, conflicts, prospects, and uncertainties, Christian Nice Guys go into a holding pattern. They wait; hoping someone else deals with the issues and solves the problems. They hold out for a rescue boat with your name on the side.

• Other Christian Nice Guys go to the other extreme and believe “All I need to do is give it to the Lord.” This common and fatal assumption ignores the truth that we co-labor with God in our spiritual and emotional growth, which are greatly connected. This false assumption is also a hiding place for many Christian Nice Guys who don’t think they can do the soul work required to face their fears and the misconceptions they produce.

The Nice Guy is smiling, but he feels hopeless and pessimistic, which in his mind justifies his reluctance to ask others for help. If things are hopeless, why fight life? Just ease into the arms of fate. If something is beyond his control, that’s the way it was meant to be. He may well believe he is working against God’s will when he exerts his own.

• Mellow Messiah, an Insidious Distortion: Christian men across denominational divides are told to follow an example of being and behaving that doesn’t exist. They are told to be “like Jesus,” but they are shown an incomplete portrait of him as “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” They carry what I call the “Nice Guy Bible”, in which they’re encouraged only to underline and study the “pleasant passages” while largely or completely ignoring the ones that can bring freedom from passivity.

This Nice Nazarene is fictitious. The Gospels show a Jesus who was both tender and tough, depending on the circumstances. Jesus traveled the entire emotional spectrum without apology. Men who follow a false Jesus hamstring themselves, the constraints nowhere more painful to experience or to witness than in marriage.

• My friend Michael Levine, who’s not a Christian, says he can spot Christians at Hollywood parties: “They worship at the altar of other people’s approval.” Michael’s fascinated as to why Christians think Jesus was wimpy, when even he can read that Jesus wasn’t: “Jesus is portrayed as some weak guy who patted kids on the head all the time, and Christian men are expected to follow this example.” Michael, who does public relations for stars, loves Christians. His best friend is a Christian, so he’s no bigot. I sometimes what to disagree: frequently, we’re the bland leading the bland. We lack backbone. Following a half-Jesus makes us half-alive, dull, unable to connect, missing intimacy.

Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life could have a sicker on the cover: The purpose-driven life is impossible to attain if fear is in the driver’s seat of your life; you must decide whether you will serve pleasantries or purpose.

• Three powerful forces (a culture at odds with masculinity, the psychology of passivity, and a twisted caricature of Jesus) encourage many men to remain or become passive, to lay down the sword of their will, and thereby relinquish the provision for and protection of those within their care. You’ve seen how those powers make it hard, and in extreme cases impossible, for your Christian Nice Guy to create intimacy.

But now the good news: These forces pale when compared to the power a good woman has in the life of an average man. No other person possesses your potential to help him move in a better direction. When you use this strength rightly and justly, you can create an environment like no other.

There’s so much more that this book reveals on this subject that we don’t have the ability to give you. We truly hope you can obtain this book to read further on what to do about your husband’s passivity. It is titled, Married But Not Engaged, written by Paul and Sandy Coughlin, published by Bethany House Publishers www.bethanyhouse.com.But we also know that if it’s impossible for you to obtain it (for geographical reasons), this can still be a starting point where the Holy Spirit, our Wonderful Counselor, can teach you how to help your husband move from passivity to being an active partner with you in your marriage. There are other articles on this web site (and other web sites we recommend) along with other books we recommend (which you might obtain), as well as reading the article we provide a link to below. You can also visit Paul Coughlin’s web site at: www.christianniceguy.com to read what else you can find there.

Become a student of marriage and of your spouse to do all you can to prayerfully turn the direction around in your marriage. Someone needs to be a hero here and you may be the colleague God wants to use in this situation. You may be tired of trying, but we pray you will lean upon the Lord for added strength and insight to see what further can be done about your husband’s passivity.

To read an article titled,
“No More Christian Nice Guy:”

CLICK HERE

Are you willing to encourage him on the deepest emotional levels, but you can’t chip through the ice?

Do you feel that despite your relatively lax expectations (i.e. making few demands), you are being taken advantage of? In other words, does a void exist for you?

In my counseling practice I specialize in treating common emotional stresses that, if left unattended, can turn into major debilitating problems. The hurting people who come to see me are trying to cope with anger, depression, anxiety, and the like stemming from their marriage. Since these issues are usually played out in the home, I often face the task of helping people understand how their emotions relate to their unsolved marriage problems.

Over twenty-five thousand counseling sessions have shown me that the single most common marital problem I encounter is the case of an emotionally eager wife whose husband will not engage with her on a deep, meaningful, and personal level. These phrases are indicators of the problem:

• “Just when I think we’ve really connected, he does something to prove he never understood a thing I said.”
• “I think the guy is oblivious to my feelings.”
• “What does it take to get through to him?”
• “He cares more about his work [or sports or hobbies] than he does about me.”

As the relationship progresses, or rather, fails to progress, feelings of disillusionment and futility become entrenched, and faulty patterns of communication yield increasing frustration. Failure to progress is not for lack of trying.

As I consult in case after case, I see that many emotionally eager women have good reason to feel disappointed. Most women need strong, growing relationships that are openly expressed, and their husbands fail to supply that need. These wives are living with men who have unconsciously committed themselves to an evasive way of life.

The wives aren’t the only ones hurt by this evasiveness. These men, unwilling to seriously explore the depths of their own emotional needs, perch securely atop their own little time bombs. As frustration and confusion mount, something will eventually blow.

If at all possible, I include husbands in my counseling sessions. You’d be surprised how often these undemonstrative men are looking, deep inside, for a way to jump-start their marriages. At least at an unexpected level, they are begging for someone to show them a better way to relate to their wives. In these cases, the potential for counseling success is very strong. I can show spouses the best method to address their unique relational needs, and the lessons will probably “take.”

When the husband, however, is unwilling to participate in counseling, the wife still has some excellent options. Her spouse may cling to stubborn, evasive patterns of relating, but she can make improvements in two general areas:

1. Have you noticed that in our culture, the burden of a relationship often falls on the woman? The woman is expected to “make it work.” If a man remains faithful, he gets the credit; if he strays, it’s somehow her fault, at least in part. When a relationship unravels, the greater share of the blame ends on her doorstep.

Counseling, however, can help a woman learn what lies behind the scenes of her husband’s personality, what makes him do what he does. With that knowledge in hand, she can come to realize that her husband’s behavior is not her fault after all.

2. The woman can examine the ways in which she reacts to her husband. From there she can figure out better ways of relating that will cause her less stress and personal frustration. Then, even if he never improves his behavior, she can still enjoy improved personal stability. She can be happier.

Identifying Pattern

The first step toward improving one’s relationship is to understand what constitutes patterns in marriages that can, frankly, be emotionally abusive.

It sounds so far as if I’ve been painting the husbands as villains. That’s not true in the least. Most of these men have perfectly honorable intentions and would never try to hurt their wives. But even though they usually do not set out to harm, it happens all the same.

The problem lies in the way most (not all by any means!) men approach life. As a general rule, men are less naturally inclined than women to address personal or sensitive subjects. This isn’t simply fear of pain. They really aren’t as interested. They have a natural tendency to bypass the lengthy processing that is so necessary to intimate personal interchanges and skip straight to the solution.

When the wife seeks greater depth than simply problem-options-solution and presses to explore the emotional side of an issue or its ramifications, the man’s frustration kicks in. “We’ve already handled the problem; therefore, it doesn’t exist anymore; so what is it with this woman?” To him, detailed processing is useless, perhaps even inane.

He then—and this is a key—begins looking for ways to end his participation in his wife’s processing. He may withdraw or try to put her back onto a path of logic or perhaps even explode. The explosion, you see, is a diversion, a distraction—in essence, a change of subject. Changing the subject is another often-used way out of processing. He is guided by the dread of having to spend any more time than is necessary to dwell on her emotional needs, for he almost never sees them as needs.

Women generally experience feelings and emotions more intensely than do men, mostly because they allow themselves to. A wife lets emotions run their course even as the husband is trying to stuff them, to get rid of them, for he sees them as anti-productive. Let me emphasize that there is no right-and-wrong about having strong emotions or even, to some extent, downplaying them. But because she recognizes and even nurtures her emotional side, the wife can enjoy life in its richest, fullest dimension.

Relationship and family connections are the most important ingredients in most wives’ lives. By their very nature, close relationships generate strong emotions. The wife can inadvertently create problems when she so craves emotional connections that she loses the ability to respond with reason or calm. She may become anxious; she certainly becomes angry. Not to put too fine a point on it, but hers is an insistent anger whereas his is a resistant anger.

The woman locked into these patterns can cry and complain that she feels unloved. She has such a powerful need to feel understood and cherished at an emotional level that she becomes greatly disillusioned when external signs of that understanding are nonexistent.

Evasive husbands invent a broad range of behaviors for avoiding the in-depth discussions they see as useless and potentially harmful: the silent treatment, pretended agreement, constant forgetfulness, procrastination, laziness, temper outbursts, work-a-holism, undue attention to a hobby or sport, and in general merely being unavailable. The evasive man may tune out. He might say whatever he thinks his wife wants to hear at that moment, to prevent the boat from rocking, you see, and harbors no intention of actually following through.

To counter evasiveness, the emotionally eager wife will be prone toward responses such as crying, persuading, calling friends for support, acting moody, repeating the same requests, accusing, and giving up. Once the cycle gets going it can be difficult to break.

Factors Behind the Pattern

In my practice, I see seven factors that are very common in marriages affected by the evasive and the emotionally eager relationship patterns. As we examine them, you will see that this tug-of-war is not confined to a few households. It is widespread. I find this tension in the homes of driven, success-oriented people and in laid-back, take-it-easy relationships. Some of the participants have a history of poor relations with others, while some can point to great popularity with others.

If your husband will join you in the awareness process, that’s great! Use the information provided as a springboard for healthy, honest discussion. If he will not, and many won’t, choose to make yourself aware of what’s happening and grow anyway. One person working toward a healthy style of relating is better than no one at all taking steps.

Let’s look at the seven indicators:

1. Communication is reduced to power plays. If nothing else, evasive behavior creates a feeling of power. This concept of control and power-wielding can take some strange twists, and the people involved usually do not see it for what it is.

If the emotionally eager wife responds with her own overbearing style instead of understanding his fear of being controlled, she does the very thing that makes matters worse. She speaks coercively.

Perversely, even a caring husband derives a certain subconscious satisfaction when he witnesses his wife in great emotional distress. The underlying thought: You see? I do have power! I can control her emotions, and that’s not an easy thing to do. My tactics worked.

The more the wife registers anger or futility, the more likely the evasive husband will continue to respond with power tactics. His urgent, compelling need to keep the upper hand is satisfied. And I repeat, this is not necessarily deliberate. Usually, it is all going on in the darkest caverns of the mind.

2. He avoids commitment and personal accountability. A common complaint I hear from emotionally eager wives is that they cannot get a solid commitment to anything. Their man is hard to pin down.

Remember that evasive husbands unconsciously lust for power. They must maintain control. So it isn’t hard to see why they don’t want to be held accountable to specific plans. They have confused commitment with enslavement or coercion and wrongly assume the words mean much the same thing. They see simple requests, then, as attempts at coercion, and they circumvent them by remaining vague.

These men realize that accountability requires a certain amount of vulnerability, and that scares them. Clear communication, self-revelation, and openness: These qualities could boomerang on them, they fear. The evasive person also fears that his good nature will be taken advantage of, so he plays it safe by revealing the least amount that he can about his plans, his preferences, his feelings.

Although these men would never admit it even to themselves, they have made a commitment to dishonesty. Sometimes blatant lying is involved, as when a man says he will do something, knowing full well that he will not. But usually this dishonesty is more subtle. Without openly lying, these men try to create an illusion of cooperation when in fact they inwardly hope to blaze their own trails independently of their mates’ plans.

With this fear of accountability, these men fuel the wives’ worst fears of marital isolation. The men do whatever they must to keep a safe distance—exactly the opposite of what the emotionally eager wives are seeking. The men keep their feelings well hidden; the wives want feelings brought into view. The men think they dare not expose their preferences lest they be denied (in other words, the woman controls the situation through the power of choice). The women want more than anything else to know what their men want.

Needless to say, this factor of poor accountability works against the success of any relationship, for a thriving marriage needs sharing and openness in order to be truly fused into a unit.

3. Leadership roles are confused. With all this control jockeying and poor accountability, the third factor in these conflicted marriages isn’t hard to see: badly defined leadership roles. The evasive husband prefers to hold back and sidestep situations that will bring his wife’s criticism to bear, and that includes certain situations where his leadership would be expected. He may even coyly set her up to take the heat. That, you see, is real control!

Have either of these scenarios happened in your home?

• A child makes a request that Dad knows should be turned down, so he says, “Why don’t you ask your mother?” Let her be the ogre who denies the child’s wants.

• The husband hears someone reprimand his wife. This might be a stranger in public or his own mother in private. Instead of standing up for his wife, he remains silent even though he knows his wife feels abandoned.

These husbands know that the more leadership they exert, the more controversy they may encounter. It works that way in politics; it must work that way in marriage. Notice that the power plays are still going on.

But here we’re talking about open, visible leadership. Being chronic conflict avoiders, these men prefer to lie low and stay out of the fray. In the battle of the sexes, it’s a good way to keep your head from being shot off. They falsely assume that openness invites problems.

It’s that don’t-rock-the-boat thing again. Unfortunately, by backing away from the leadership role, these men are sacrificing the family’s long-term needs—a stable leader—for the short-term goal of peace-for-the-moment.

Interestingly, in many cases, men who back out of the leadership role in personal and family matters are anything but weak in business pursuits or civic projects.

1. Relationship is secondary to performance. Human beings err, make occasional wrong choices, and are occasionally selfish. In healthy marriages, the partners recognize this fact and allow plenty of room for open conflict resolution. Emotionally eager wives would welcome the chance to discuss problems. But because the evasive husband prefers to minimize his own emotional vulnerability, he customarily runs from the threat of having to struggle with emotions. Logic tells us that if a man is running away from something, he is also running toward something else. What is it that men run toward to avoid personal interactions? Performance.

Now, as a very general rule, men are performance-oriented anyway. Whereas women enjoy the process of doing something, men want to reach the goal as quickly and efficiently as possible and go on to something else. (Again, I remind you, there are plenty of exceptions to this.)

Commonly, evasive men will not mind giving time to an activity such as yard work, fishing, a project at the church. It’s familiar turf. They already know how to do those things. They’ll see a nice, neat, trimmed-up yard, the new church fence, perhaps a fish or two.something. But relationships require being not doing, an unsettling concept for many men.

2. Sexual relating is out of sync. Happy, growing marriages are typified by reasonable sexual communication. Although frequency is not the chief concern (some couples are satisfied with twice monthly sex, some enjoy it several times a week), union occurs frequently enough to remind the spouses of their love and commitment to each other. Sex is a means of maintaining secure bonding.

For evasive men, however, sex is intended not for bonding but for physical satisfaction and—here it is again—control. Who’s in the driver’s seat?

At one extreme, the evasive man abstains for long periods of time, showing virtually no interest at all in his wife sexually. He knows sex can bring out tender sharing, something he prefers to avoid. He determines that it is easier to deny the pleasures of sexual relating in order to avoid emotional intimacy. I have heard numerous accounts from women who are eager to be sexually involved with their husbands but are rebuffed for six months at a time, a year, or longer.

The more common extreme has the evasive man showing little tenderness during waking hours. When bedtime comes, his engine turns on, and he gets his satisfaction from his wife. Then he slips back into his comfortable shell. He may even turn on at two o’clock in the morning, make his move, then go back to sleep. This approach to sex neatly minimizes emotional intimacy without minimizing the feel-good experience. The wife’s emotions are hardly considered.

The emotionally eager wife, then, develops conflicting feelings about marital sex. Part of her wants it and sees it as a wonderful communication time, but she is afraid of the hurt that comes as she senses her husband is merely after physical relief.

Often, if this conflict goes on long enough, one spouse or the other may opt for an outside form of sexual satisfaction: an affair, pornography, or flirtations outside marriage. Either spouse can feel such strong disappointment as to be abnormally vulnerable to temptation.

3. Personal insights are unequal. Healthy people not only admit the need for improvement, they welcome the challenge. Growing people are willing to absorb insights and information. They actively seek out truth.

Evasive people are not inclined toward insight and awareness. Apart from the fact that it’s too much trouble for what you get out of it, the evasive husband really isn’t interested in being challenged on the personal, philosophical level. That makes him too vulnerable. He wants the comfortable routine, the level keel, putting little or no thought into the whys of life.

The emotionally eager wives are usually the type who devour self-help books, enjoy stimulating philosophical discussions, flock to seminars. They invite growth. They like being challenged about what can be done to create a fuller life and why they need to make the needed adjustments. Result: They grow and expand intellectually as their husbands tune in still another football game.

This eagerness does not always translate into significant change. Because of the wife’s tendency to play off her husband’s behavior—reacting instead of pro-acting—this woman eventually loses heart as she realizes that her efforts are not being matched by his. She begins to perceive that she’s outgrowing him. I’ve see many of these wives become increasingly agitated or collapse in despair or depression. Either way, the woman ought to press forward, gaining insight, regardless of her mate’s lack of interest.

4. Both sides feel victimized. Evasive husbands subconsciously live with a philosophy of “You leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone, and we’ll get along just fine.” The fewer challenges they encounter, the less conflict they experience, and the better they feel. The problem is that their spouses by nature yearn for a far more intimate pattern of relating.

The wife launches her various attempts to get the intimacy and depth she craves, protesting or cajoling or simply acting unhappy. The husband, turned off by his wife’s prodding, sulks and wonders, “Why do I have to live with this kind of stuff? She’s crabby for no good reason.”

Either unwilling or unable to grasp that he is contributing to the problem, he sees himself as a victim of unreasonableness. Victims are not cheerful people. The feel, if you will —of the household nose-dives as anger and sadness feed on each other.

The emotionally eager wife feels just as victimized. “When is all this misery going to end? Look what he’s doing to my life. It’s sterile! Going nowhere. Emotionally zip. When will he ever wake up, or is it always going to be this miserable?”

In a sense, there is truth to each mate’s feeling of victimization. Both spouses can point to evidence that this marriage has become something of a raw deal. Both can show legitimate ways in which the other spouse is contributing to the problem. Neither sees the whole picture. When either of them places all blame on the other partner, the “I’m a victim” attitude has gone too far.

Once this evasive pattern has become entrenched in a marriage, it is tempting to place full blame onto the shoulders of the husband who resists deep relating. Let’s say that, in certain instances, it’s true. He does need to change his ways of relating to his wife. His evasiveness damages and even destroys his position of influence in his own home. After all, God did not place us here on earth to avoid each other. We were made to relate first to God, then with family and friends.

Evasive behaviors are damaging not just to the wife but to the husband as well, preventing him from knowing the satisfaction God intended for him.

Beginning the Journey Toward Improvement

If you are the mate of someone who is non-communicative, realize that to some degree, the relational problems you’ve encountered are predictable. They show up in a lot of marriages. Also, there are some things of a general nature that you can do to ease them. For starters:

• Quit assuming responsibility for your spouse’s imperfections. He may well say, “You make me this way with your constant [nagging, whining, whatever].” That’s not true, even though he may think it is. He would be acting the same way if he were married to someone else.

• Ease up on your persuasive efforts to convince your mate to fit your mold. Coercion will only make the problem worse. This is hard to do when you desperately want change.

Down deep, you probably realize that no person is going to change, at least not effectively, based on someone else’s forceful persuasion. An evasive husband will amend his ways only if given the room to do so in his own will. That leaves the ugly prospect that he will choose not to. For now, it is wise to back off.

That does not mean that you quit doing anything. If you believe that your husband is ducking away from topics you are sure must be discussed, that he is becoming evasive in the midst of emotional exchanges, can you tell him about the frustration this creates without overworking the point or becoming confrontational? Everything will be working against you.

The heat of the moment makes a person say things she would not say at a less emotional time. And most of all, old habits die hard. You are accustomed to addressing an issue in a particular way now. It is exceptionally hard to change your approach. But it will pay dividends if you can do it. Personal soul-searching will help you turn things around and give positive traits to your marriage.

To get a good idea about how ready you are to do the soul-searching necessary for real growth, be aware of your use of one simple word. You. How often is that word spoken as you are trying to make sense of the tensions with your mate? I’m not suggesting that you should never be spoken. I am saying, though, that its overuse indicates that you are not looking inward.

In short, to improve your own satisfaction and happiness, a major step is to put your own house in order. You may find that the improvement in your life is just the catalyst your spouse needs. And even if you do not experience the adjustments in your mate that you have hoped for, you will still be a more stable and content individual. Are you willing to start with your own hard, inward search?

The emotionally eager wife will say, “Yes! Of course.” But then she amends that with a but. “I’m willing to adjust, but my husband needs to change.” Whether or not you are correct to say this, you are basing your happiness and responses on someone else’s behavior.

Your willingness to work on your own issues will be the key for finding personal peace, then potentially, success in that most important relationship, your marriage.

The above edited article came from the great book, Distant Partner Preview or purchase this book now. by Dr Les Carter, published by Thomas Nelson Publishers. The subtitle for the book is: “How to tear down emotional walls and communicate with your husband.” We can’t recommend this book highly enough in helping to do just that. There are so many other things that Dr Carter wrote beyond what was stated here. As Dr Carter says in the beginning of the book, “I have written this book primarily for answer-seeking wives… I want you to understand why some husbands act evasively and maintain a certain distance from you. Most particularly, I want to show you what you can do to improve your emotional reactions to your husband.”

We believe that obtaining this book would be an inexpensive way to start on a road to better understanding and working through issues that could greatly improve your relationship. Also, if you want to read this book along with your spouse (if he desires to do so) Dr Carter explains in the preface of the book the best way to do this.

This trait often emerges in a man when his confidence has been badly shaken, or when his masculine self-image was wounded at an early age. Recognizing and understanding passive-aggressive reactions will allow a wife to more effectively minister to her husband and to survive the intense frustration of life with a man who withdraws because he is unsure of himself.

There are two parts to handling the problem of a withdrawn man. The first is to commit yourself to the process of helping him emerge into his God-given role. And the second is to build for yourself a strong relationship with the Lord from which to draw strength while the emerging process is working.

How does a wife enter into the process of helping her “withdrawn man” come out of himself? The first part of her task is to build the skill of “active listening.”

Most of us assume that communication involves talking, but it also requires listening and looking. Women are notoriously good listeners-at least during courtship. But many times, this crucial skill is lost and forgotten after marriage.

True listening involves far more than waiting to talk. It involves picking up clues in an attempt to understand the reasons behind what is said and what is left unsaid. Often, a wife is at loss for what to say to a husband who is silent. Many ask, in frustration, “How do you listen to a stone?” You don’t. But neither do you try to forcefully penetrate a stone by talking at it.

A wife can, however, show her husband that she cares what he’s going through. And this can be done non- verbally in as many creative ways as you can imagine.

She can approach her silent husband, who has slouched in an easy chair, with a snack and the evening newspaper. She can stand quietly beside him, rub his neck and communicate without speaking “I love you. You’ve come to the right after a tough day.”

This can work in reverse, too. Instead of telling her stone-silent mate about mate about all the pressures of her day—which will likely drive him deeper into removed silence and the wife deeper into frustration—she can try this: “Honey, I’ve had a rough day. Would you massage my shoulders and help me relax?” If you cannot get a listening ear, you can at least have the comfort of his warm, relaxing touch.

Many women wrongly assume that their withdrawn man is so confident in himself that he is withdrawn in silence because he doesn’t need her at all. This is often a very wrong assumption. In fact, he may be withdrawn because he has had his confidence shaken, has seen his dreams shattered, or has spent his day feeling defeated. As a result, he needs a safe place to go, and home should be that place.

Home has been called “the spot where when you go, they have to let you in.” Many times, however, a man sees his home only as a location filled with more pressure. If he has been defeated, he’s not thinking of what his wife has faced all day, nor does he see the many roles she fills. His vision shrinks to the minute size of his own life. He’s left staring at the rubble of his shattered dreams. He sees his goals and his happiness slipping through his grasp.

Yes, it’s true that you may have had the challenges and defeats in your day, too. But the fact is, seizing your husband by the ear the moment he walks in the door is not the way to gain his eager attention. If you learn the approach of active listening, however, you are more likely, later, to get the attention you need as well. But what do you listen for?

What Is He Running From?
The desire to escape pain is a tremendous motivator for many men. For a man, one of the greatest sources of inner pain is the lack of success or outright failure.

Recently, in an interview on a news program, the race-car driver Danny Sullivan was asked, “When you’re in that car, what do you fear most?” You might reasonably expect him to reply, “A crash,” or “A fire.” But no. Like many men would, he said, “Failure. I cannot stand to lose!”

Even men who have a strong belief in God are not immune from this male trait.

The prophet Elijah might be an example of a man who experienced depression and a paralysis of will because of a failure. In 1 Kings 18, we read that Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal. But at a time when one might expect this great man of God to be on top of the world, he made a mistake: He ran when his life was threatened.

We read that “he went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself that he might die. He said, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take my life, for I am not better than my fathers’” (1 Kings 19:4).

A Christian woman may think that her husband’s beliefs should erase his human, masculine weaknesses. But given an even that shakes his confidence, a man’s first response will be to escape pain just like Elijah.

Unlike the prophet of old, the Christian husband has a wife and family who, hopefully, are committed to seeing him overcome human weakness.

Lashing Out
There can also be another side to the withdrawn man. When he isn’t immersed in silence, he may be demanding and critical. Having lost the battle in his working world, he may turn his attention to the one place he still seeks to prove his dominance—his own home.

One of the obvious first signs is that he’ll become less and less considerate. He’ll contribute little effort to help with the chores that make the household function. Then his wife points out his shortcomings as a husband, a father and a Christian. The more she communicates a lack of respect for him, the sooner he’ll decide that home is just another place filled with hard knocks. This produces a downward spiral with results that can be devastating.

Another sign that a man feels his failure has thrown his life “out of control” is that he will take only “safe” tasks. Why should he attempt something that carries with it the uncertainty of risk? Therefore, some men will pull back from activities over which they don’t maintain a high degree of control, or in which they aren’t certain of success.

The complexity of today’s world often freezes people between choices. When a man finds himself at a crossroad in life, he may believe it is actually wise not to act at all. He then becomes glued in his tracks to indecision. In his desire to do the best thing for himself, and the perfect thing for his dreams, he does nothing.

If he’s employed in a job he dislikes, he may remain so, in the desire to wait for the perfect moment to switch. Meanwhile, his dissatisfaction and emotional withdrawal from his family continues.

The actions—and more importantly, the reactions —of a woman whose husband is undergoing a crisis are critical. It doesn’t help to say, “My husband knows the Lord. Why doesn’t he just pray?” The facts are that Christ has given each of us a ministry, and the wife may be the only expression of God’s love that her husband can see during his most trying times!

Now, I’m not suggesting that a woman should overlook or ignore her own needs when trying to help her husband out of time of emotional withdrawal. In fact, while she’s learning to listen and to wisely communicate her love in practical ways, she must not neglect her own emotional and spiritual needs.

Only by learning to press on in her relationship with the Lord will a woman be able to handle her own pain, which will merely compound the marital stress if allowed to churn out in negative words and reactions. The path to helping her husband and, therefore, ultimately helping herself, starts with her own walk with the Lord.

The Path to Peace
Often a woman marries believing her deepest needs will be met in the relationship with her husband and in the family and home that promises to be hers. There’s that tendency in each of us, men and women alike, to view our spouse as someone pre-designed to meet our own needs. But only God himself can satisfy the longings of our heart.

If a wife is to have a major impact, she must ask God for the wisdom to help her to focus her husband on hope.

There are several creative ways she can work on this task:

1. Begin to keep a prayer diary of little things she is praying for in her devotional time. Keeping track of the ways God is answering prayer will also bring hope.

2. Acknowledge that even the things her husband is now doing to avoid responsibility as having potential future value. (For instance, a wife whose husband is a good mechanic could say, “You’re such a great mechanic. It makes me feel safe to drive around in a car I know you’re looking after.”)

3. Find something he has done in the past that is paying off now. Compliment him. (”I’m grateful you built that barbecue. We’re getting so much good use out of it this summer.”)

If these simple steps are undertaken and continued patiently as a ministry, a wife may show her husband that she believes in his future and his worth, even if he does not. This can be done without sounding “preachy.” And more importantly, she needs to be involved in encouraging her husband in a way that will give her hope as well.

Build His Confidence
Include as a part of your personal prayer list this daily request: “Lord, let me catch him doing something right today—anything!” Thanking him for the smallest deed as soon as possible can be a positive reinforcement.

As newfound confidence develops, your husband will be a happier man to live with.

The above article came from the book, Husbands Who Won’t Lead and Wives Who Won’t Follow, written by James Walker www.bethanyhouse.com, published by Bethany House Publishers. It is an excellent book and goes into much greater detail to help you understand your spouse, your marriage, and your expectations for each other. This is a very practical, insightful book that can help both husbands and wives find assistance and directions to help them find a balance of roles by investing a few hours going through this great resource.

Former pastor, James Walker is a free-lance writer, seminar leader and practicing psychologist who “tackles issues of leadership head on. He provides practical guidelines for those desiring to understand themselves, their spouse, and their marital roles.” In this book he also shows how to take positive steps toward healthy changes for a healthier marriage.

“It’s a complaint I hear regularly from people looking for help for their marriages:

• ‘I feel distant from my spouse.’

• ‘I try to get my husband to open up, but instead he just shuts down.’

• ‘My wife just doesn’t seem interested in me anymore. I feel like we’re a million miles apart.’

• ‘I don’t know if I love him anymore.’

“What we’re talking about here is emotional abandonment. Instead of physically leaving the relationship, your spouse simply checks out emotionally. They stop investing in the marriage, leaving their mate feeling detached and unwanted. To the outside world the situation can still look rosy, but in reality the relationship is dying a slow, quiet death.” (Dr Dave Currie with Glen Hoos)

Emotional abandonment might not even die quite so slowly and quietly, as the spouse who is shut out tries to grapple with what is happening. Sometimes there is a lot of screaming and finger-pointing within the home— which often seems to complicate the situation even further. And yet, what can the abandoned spouse do to turn the relationship back around in the right direction?

Honestly, it’s confusing —even to those who call themselves “experts” in marriage relationships because everyone’s situation is different. What’s especially tragic is that emotional abandonment is something that seems to be happening in epidemic proportions in marriages today, or maybe it’s just that we hear more about this in today’s world… it’s difficult to tell.

But whatever the case, this is something we need to address because of the devastation it is causing on so many levels to individuals within their marriages, families, churches, and society as a whole, as the family unit breaks down and goes in an unhealthy direction.

To give you some type of insight into what may be causing emotional shut downs and what a spouse can do to turn things around in a better direction, we have found several web site articles that we believe will help. Please click onto the links below to read:

• EMOTIONAL ABANDONMENT: When Your Spouse Shuts You Out

• HER HUSBAND WOULDN’T SPEAK TO HER FOR THREE YEARS

• MY HUSBAND IS A MYSTERIOUS ISLAND

That’s NOT why you married the person who you once thought was the “love of your life.” But now you find that your spouse is closed off emotionally to you and you feel emotionally abandoned because he/she is uncommunicative.

The following are a few insights and a few questions that might help you that Dr Gary Chapman brings out in his book, “Loving Solutions”:

There are many reasons why some spouses become uncommunicative. Their unwillingness to share verbally finds its root in what is going on inside of them. Often it is unmet needs in the marital relationship that have stimulated resentment in the spirit of the silent spouse. His silence is a way of expressing this resentment. It is his/her way of saying, “I don’t like you, so I will treat you as a non-person.”

I don’t mean that the silent partner is consciously thinking these thoughts; I mean these are the inner emotional reasons why he or she is not talking. If we can discover the emotions inside the person and the factors that give rise to these emotions, we are well on the way to helping the non-communicating spouse to break his/her silence.

The spouse who seeks to be a positive change agent would do well to ask this question: “Does my spouse have an unmet emotional need that may be causing him to resent me?” …Each of ourselves can ask ourselves the following:

• Does my spouse genuinely feel my unconditional love or has my love been conditional—I will love you if…

• Have I done anything to infringe upon my spouse’s freedom? Does he feel that I am trying to control his life?

• Has my speech or behavior struck at her efforts to gain significance? Does she see me as condemning something that she values as being significant?

• Does he see me as a barrier to the fulfillment of his need for recreation and relaxation?

• Is my spouse struggling with the spiritual dimension of life? Does she see me as interfering with her search for peace with God?

Anyone of these questions may uncover the source of your spouse’s silence. The challenge then is to find a way to help him or her meet that emotional need at the same time maintain your own integrity and get your own needs met.

That’s quite the challenge —one that our Wonderful Counselor can help you to work through. To help you on this mission we recommend that you read the following articles, for which we are supplying links to web sites where they are posted.

Please read them carefully and prayerfully, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal truths to you concerning your marriage. Then glean the information you can use and apply it to your situation.

From the Smalley Relationship Center, please click onto the link provided below to read the Question of the Week, which deals with:

• THE EMOTIONALLY DISTANT HUSBAND/FATHER

From “Christianity Today” please click onto the following link:

• MY SPOUSE IS EMOTIONALLY DISTANT

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