“I hurt all the time because I feel alone and abandoned.” • “My husband is no longer my friend.” • “The only time he pays attention to me is when he wants sex.” • “He’s never there for me when I need him the most.” • “When he hurts my feelings he doesn’t apologize.” • “He lives his life as if we weren’t married; he rarely considers me.” • “We’re like ships passing in the night, he goes his way and I go mine.” • “My husband has become a stranger to me—I don’t even know who he is anymore.” • “He doesn’t show any interest in me or what I do.”

These are complaints so many of us have all heard (and some have said) that’s at the center of a magazine article (which appeared in New Man Magazine a while back) written by Dr. Willard Harley. We’d like to share a portion of what Dr. Harley wrote on this subject of, “Why Women Leave Men” because we can all learn from what it says. Try not to just quickly skim through what it says—but really pay attention to the points that both the women and the men make on this subject because it’s at the center of so many divorces that are going on today. Dr. Harley writes:

Women tend to be more concerned about their marriages than men. They buy most of the books on marriage to try to improve them and initiate most marriage counseling. They often complain about their marriages to their closest friends and sometimes to anyone who will listen. And they also file for divorce twice as often as men. Why do women seem so dissatisfied with marriage? What do they want from their husbands? What bothers them so much about marriage that most are willing to risk their families’ future to escape it? Why do women leave men?

Each day I’m confronted by women who are extremely frustrated with their marriages. Usually, they express no hope that their husbands will ever understand what it is that frustrates them—let alone change enough to solve the problem. From their perspective, marital problems are created by their husbands who do little or nothing to solve them. Wives tend to see themselves as the major force for resolving conflicts, and when they give up their effort, the marriage is usually over.

When I talk to their husbands, they usually have a very different explanation as to why their wives feel the way they do. They often feel that the expectations of women in general and their wives in particular, have grown completely out of reach. These men, who feel that they’ve made a gigantic effort to be caring and sensitive to their wives, get no credit whatsoever for their sizable contribution to the family. They feel under enormous pressure to improve their financial support, improve the way they raise their children, and improve the way they treat their wives. Many men I see are emotionally exhausted and feel that for all their effort, they get nothing but criticism.

The simpler role of husbands in decades past has now been replaced by a much more complex and confusing role, especially in their relationships with their wives. Some conclude that women are born to complain and men must ignore it to survive. Others feel that women have come to expect so much of men that they’re impossible to please, so there’s no point in even trying. Very few men, these days, feel that they’ve learned to become the husbands that their wives have wanted, and the job seems to be getting more and more difficult.

Men’s perceived failure to satisfy their wives is punctuated by the fact that women file for divorce twice as often as men. In other words, their unhappiness with marriage often results in divorce. The most common reason women give for leaving their husbands is ‘mental cruelty.’ When legal grounds for divorce are stated, about half report they’ve been emotionally abused. But the mental cruelty they describe is rarely the result of their husband’s efforts to drive them crazy. It’s usually husbands being indifferent, failing to communicate and demonstrating other forms of neglect.

Another reason for divorce reported almost as much as mental cruelty is ‘neglect’ itself. These include both emotional abandonment and physical abandonment. Husbands that work away from the home, sometimes leaving their wives alone for weeks at a time, fall into this category.

When all forms of spousal neglect are grouped together, we find that it’s far ahead of all the other reasons combined that women leave men. Surprisingly few women divorce because of physical abuse, infidelity, alcoholism, criminal behavior, fraud, or other serious grounds. In fact, I find myself bewildered by women in serious physical danger refusing to leave the men that threaten their safety. Simply stated, women leave men when they’re neglected. Neglect accounts for almost all the reasons women leave and divorce men.

I have little trouble convincing most men that verbal and physical abuses are legitimate reasons for their wives to leave. And there has been increasing social pressure on men lately to avoid hurting their wives physically and verbally, which makes my job even easier. But neglect is a much tougher sell, and it’s also much more difficult to overcome than abuse. While it’s the most important reason women leave men, it’s hard to convince men that it’s a legitimate reason, something they should avoid at all costs.

Some of the common complaints I hear from women is, “He ignores me except when he wants sex, he sits and watches television when he could be talking to me, he rarely calls me to see how I’m doing, he hurts my feelings and then never apologizes: Instead, he tells me I’m too sensitive.”

Most husbands are mystified by these complaints. They feel that their wives demand too much, and that most other women would be ecstatic if married to them. Their wives have become spoiled, take their efforts for granted and have unrealistic expectations.

Do women expect too much of their husbands or are men doing less for their wives than they should? I’ve proven to husbands over and over again that their wives usually don’t expect too much of them, and when they understand and respond to their wives’ frustration, the complaining ends and a terrific marriage begins.

What’s more, their wives aren’t expecting more effort from them. Instead, they expect efforts in a different direction. It isn’t more difficult to please women these days; it simply requires a change in priority of effort.

What are women looking for in men? They want a soul mate, someone they trust that’s there for them when they have a problem, who takes their feelings into account when decisions are being made. Someone to whom they feel emotionally connected.”

There’s a lot more to what Dr. Harley had to say on this subject. We’re hoping that even though we’re stopping here with his comments, you’ll seek out the rest of the article in Willard Harley’s web site: www.marriagebuilders.com. He has a lot of excellent material available to those who want it. Read through the “Basic Concepts” he has listed with “The Love Bank,” “Love Busters,” and the “Policy of Joint Agreement” plus much more. 

If you’ve been reading our Marriage Messages for any length of time you’ve probably come to understand that we believe there aren’t any “shortcuts” to having the kind of marriage God intends for us to have. I (Steve) remember reading in Ken Nair’s book, Discovering the Mind of a Woman, his reference to the male mentality of “vending machine” marriages. Basically, he’s referring to the thought that if we (men) put something into our marriage, we should receive a desired result.

However, it’s not that simple. We need to think more in terms of making continual deposits (meeting our wife’s needs) which collect compound-interest. That takes time and a commitment. It’s our prayer that you’ll invest the time this week in your marriage and begin to make the kind of “deposits” that will reap big dividends in the future.

God Bless!
Steve and Cindy Wright

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