If your wife is like me, she says this after she’s carefully weighed some very telling evidence that says her husband doesn’t regard her ideas, her concerns, her abilities.

What made this conclusion so hurtful in my case was the feedback I was receiving loud and clear from my husband merely reinforced a message I’d been getting all my life. It may have started with the mistreatment I suffered as a girl.

The dating scene where women are often treated like sex objects conveyed the same judgment. Then I felt much the same way when I became a pastor’s wife—a mere accessory to my husband’s career.

Whenever I remembered those life experiences, I kept picking up the same old underlying theme, in the background of my life: Holly is worthless. Holly doesn’t measure up. Holly is bad.

For so much of our marriage. I never even thought of myself in the context of value. My focus was not turned on me, but rather on my husband Randy—his needs, his job, his value, his present and future calling, and what I needed to do to help him get his work done. It took years for me to become painfully aware that my own feelings, my own opinions, my own fears and insecurities, my own personal desires and dreams, my worth as a woman with a good mind, good ideas, good intuition, and valuable skills had been lost and were not even part of the value equation.

I now understand that Randy didn’t set out to disregard me or discount my worth. He was oblivious to the fact that value was an issue.

Many couples whose marriages don’t survive find this value issue at the heart of the problem. In fact, I have in front of me a very sad letter from a man who admits he didn’t consider these questions until it seemed too late.

Only after his wife left him did he begin to understand her true value. He summed up his sense of loss in the following words that are part prayer-poem part heart-cry [which is based on the scriptures that tell us that we are cleaved together in marriage so when one of us leaves, one half of us is missing]:

O God, where is my right side?
The one that I fell in love with when I was young.

O God, where is my right side?
The one I married, the one you said was bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.
(And I took for granted.)

O God, where is my right side?
The one who has the beautiful smile and laugh.
(I never told her every day.)

O God, where is my right side?
The one who wished to talk and wanted me to listen.
(But football games, friends, and family were too important.)

O God, where is my right side?
The one who wanted me to hold her hand and put my arm around her.
(Not just as a prelude to sex.)

O God, who loved you and prayed over our family.
(I didn’t lift her up in prayer or jump for joy when she felt your loving touch.)

O God, where is my right side?
The one who wanted to be a wife and mother.
(Not the breadwinner and part-time father who handled the bills alone.)

O God, where is my right side?
The one who finally got tired and left.
(Because I couldn’t or wouldn’t be the man she wanted me to be.)

O God, where is my right side?
I look for her in the now-empty recesses of my life.
(Not wanting to admit that I just didn’t value her the way you wanted me to.)

O God, where is my right side?
I know in my heart I found her once, in the wife of my youth.
And I know I can’t win her back without you.
So I pray for a second chance.

I hope that a spark of love she once had for me still burns
And I pray that the fire of our love might blaze once more
Ten times greater than before so that our lives together will be
A powerful witness for you. Amen.

How can she say I don’t value her? If you’ve ever asked that question, let me summarize and bring the heart of this discussion into focus by asking you a few very pertinent questions. Do you value her as a person or do you merely value her for what she does for you? Do you value her only because she is a good wife to you, a good mother to your children, a good homemaker? Have you given any thought to her value apart from what she does for you?

How much do you love your wife as a person? Enough? A lot? Immeasurably? Have you ever even thought about it?

So what does she want from you anyway? She wants you to:

• Affirm what she does, but more importantly,

• Affirm who she is.

• Receive and validate her emotions.

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The above article was written by Holly Faith Phillips with Gregg Lewis in the book, What Does She Want From Me, Anyway? It is published by Zondervan Publishing House. This book gives honest answers to questions men ask about women. Drawing on the hard-learned lessons from her own marriage to Promise Keepers leader Randy Phillips, Holly addresses the tough questions men are asking. Holly’s frank insights, shared with compassion and illustrated with real-life examples from her marriage and the marriages of many men and women she talked to, give men the answers they seek. Better yet, Holly shows men how to turn those answers into practical solutions.  

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