You’ve probably picked up by now a theme running through several of the nonnegotiables to trust building: keep your word! The importance of keeping our word has lost traction in modern society. People rarely do business on just a handshake anymore. The deal has to be fraught with contracts full of legal jargon that guarantee a litigious outcome should the contract be broken. The value of our word has depreciated to the point that many of us are cynics.
For example, when a customer service agent tells you that he will take care of your issue or credit your account, do you believe and trust him? Or do you respond with exasperation and mutter to yourself, “Yeah, right.” Are you sure to note his name, the time you called, and the details of the conversation? When you hire contractors to work on your house, do you actually believe they’ll do the work promised in the time promised and to the level of quality promised? Or do you expect to be disappointed?
Perhaps I’m only projecting my cynical junk onto you. The truth is that I don’t always do what I say or say what I mean or mean what I say. Sometimes I don’t even do what I mean to do (a function of ADD)! But in my trust-building process with Shelley, I was very careful about setting the mark and hitting it as often as possible.
For most of the wives I counsel, the idea of their husband keeping his word has huge implications. And all of those implications seem to reverberate back to the marriage vows. If you’ve scarred your relationship with sexual betrayal, then your word doesn’t count for much today. And if you can’t keep your word regarding little things, how do you expect her to believe you can keep your word with the big things of life, like your marriage vows? It is incredibly important for you as a husband to be intentional about what you commit to and how you communicate that commitment to your wife.
For example, a recent client exclaimed that he should never have told his wife he wanted to go to the gym regularly. The first time he didn’t go to work out, she was quick to point out his inconsistency. She snapped at him about how he always says he’ll do something but never follows through. Then she pointed out how his failure to keep his word regarding the gym is indicative of his failure to keep his word in their marriage!
If you’ve been in this process awhile, perhaps you’ve heard the same thing. Extreme responses reveal your wife’s frustration and fear of yet another disappointment.
Another facet of this involves lying. If you’ve lied and been caught, your word is further devalued. Now, not only does your word lack any worth, your word is known to have been manipulative and used to make your spouse feel stupid. At least that’s how it seems to be interpreted. Your wife may think you were insulting her intelligence when you lied or manipulated her.
So how do you begin to redeem the value of your word? There’s really a simple answer to this question, namely, by keeping your word.
When you decide to commit to something, even the smallest matter, be sure you keep your commitment. I’m not saying to purposely set the bar low, but I’m suggesting you not set the bar too high. Don’t say you’ll read your Bible every day when you’ve hardly cracked it open in the last couple of months. Don’t say you’ll go to the gym each week if you haven’t been since last March, when your new year’s resolution wore off. Don’t commit to scheduling a date night if you aren’t committed to securing childcare. Don’t declare that something will change overnight when it is virtually impossible to change anything (especially character flaws) overnight. The Bible plainly speaks to this:
And don’t say anything you don’t mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, “I’ll pray for you,” and never doing it, or saying, “God be with you,” and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say “yes” and “no.” When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong. (Matthew 5:33–37, MSG)
We must learn to let our yes be yes and our no be no. I think one of the most difficult parts of this for me was learning how to handle my emotions when I disappointed Shelley. Sometimes, I needed to say no rather than make a promise I couldn’t keep. As much as I wanted to please her and match or exceed her expectations, there were times when I needed to say what I meant and mean what I said.
This came up in some very small ways, such as the time I promised to be home after work. She asked if I would (not could) be home by 5:30, and I struggled inside with saying yes, knowing that rush-hour traffic would make this impossible. Thus I had to learn to say no, deal with my emotions and her disappointment, and then follow through with an arrival time I could actually make. She was rarely frustrated or annoyed that I couldn’t make it home at the time she suggested, but she was hurt every time I didn’t arrive at the time I committed to be home. The actual time I could arrive wasn’t nearly as important as whether I kept my word.
In chapter 4 we noted that the word integrity is rooted in the word integer, or in other words, whole. Further, having integrity means to be the same person in every environment, whether at home, church, or work. Whether alone, with family, or with friends. Whether in town or out of town.
For any man who has struggled with sexual integrity issues, you know the internal anxiety of duplicity—trying to live two lives. We all know about doing one thing but wanting to do something different, all the while sensing our own fraudulence.
I’ve had moments when, in the midst of acting out, I consciously thought, This is not who I am! Perhaps you’ve had such moments too. Our journey toward wholeness and healing is a process of integration where we become the same person in all contexts. One particular context where our train can quickly derail is the workplace.
There is something unique about the workplace. We spend an inordinate number of hours each week at work. We show up to work in clothes much different than what we normally wear around our home. We literally change our external appearance. Already, if we aren’t careful, we’re being drawn into a different personality. We employ a different vocabulary. Whether in corporate America, small business ownership and entrepreneurship, military service, or blue- or white-collar work, we have a dictionary unique to our professional space.
When I first started at Arthur Andersen, working in telecom consulting, one of the biggest hurdles was memorizing the everyday acronyms used by everyone every day. You couldn’t effectively communicate in that environment if you didn’t know them. This is not unique to corporate life but rather rife in every line of work there is. So we dress differently and talk differently at the place where we spend the bulk of our waking hours. For your wife, this is a very scary reality. But the good news for rebuilding trust is that your work context presents a fantastic opportunity to add some more Legos to your relationship sculpture.
First and foremost is our persona. Think of persona as the personality you project in public. In this case, it’s your workplace. The truth is, only you know if you turn on a certain persona in the workplace. Your persona also has multiple forms. Sometimes it is heralded as charisma or charm. It’s the thing that helps you succeed or close the deal or win the case or convince an audience. In one sense, this is a God-given gift with profound usefulness. Thus, it would be a tragedy and borderline sin not to use the gifts and charisma you’ve been given. But these can also be used for evil or, more likely, inauthentic living. The kid who was a class clown is now simply considered funny as an adult. But behind the comedy persona may be an insecure man who uses his gift of quick wit to attract acceptance.
Persona collides with trust building with your wife at the point of interaction between you and your female coworkers. Ultimately, the goal is to simply be yourself in every situation, but when trust has been destroyed between you and your wife, it’s prudent for you to be bland, cold, dry, uninterested, and uninteresting around female colleagues. Do you get my drift? You need to run away from words or actions that make you even semi-attractive to another woman.
In Every Man’s Battle, Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker describe this as being a “dweebman.” Perhaps your work persona is that of the man with a sympathetic, listening ear or a complimentary, encouraging Christian nice guy. Or maybe the workplace is where you let loose a little bit and engage in flirtatious joking or conversations with sexual undertones. All of these are hurtful to your wife.
Your wife doesn’t want you to be any other woman’s listening ear; she wants you to be hers! She doesn’t want you to be the Christian nice guy at work and pay Jesus lip service; she wants you to behave like you love Jesus when you’re at work just like when you are at home. She’s tired of your grumpy attitude and irritability that causes arguments on the way to church, only to slap on a smile to walk through the doors. She definitely doesn’t want you to be involved in any conversations with sexual undertones. She herself may not even want to have a sexually nuanced conversation with you!
Men commonly complain that their wife doesn’t acknowledge their efforts at trust building and restoration; unfortunately, I was often guilty of this. I hear this grievance almost every week in my office as well as almost every month at an Every Man’s Battle Workshop. A husband will describe how much work he has done, how well he has followed his recovery program, and how few mistakes he has made along the way—yet his wife only responds with cynicism and skepticism. In fact, hurt wives are incredibly reticent to acknowledge progress. And wives who are reluctant to trust are usually reluctant to give compliments and positive feedback. Granted, many wives will push past their cynicism to express praise or appreciation for the work they’ve seen from their husband, but it may be short-lived and fleeting.
In addition, husbands fear that the slightest setback seems to completely erase any forward momentum. The complaining man will usually describe this as “I can do ninety-nine things right, but one wrong thing will erase all of them, and I have to start over.” Then they’ll add, “When will she start to see that I am changing?”
Sadly, frustrated and disheartened husbands will begin to demand that their wife acknowledge their progress. They’ll itemize recent achievements, recount the many hurtful things they have avoided doing, compare and contrast the old and new man, and insist their wife acknowledge their prowess in accomplishing these heroic feats.
Okay … maybe I got carried away there, but that’s what I hear from a lot of wives when their husbands demand a progress report. What’s the end result? If wives give any credence to their husband’s work, they do so with resentment and feelings of being manipulated and even bullied.
So if you want to see your ninety-nine good deeds erased, demand that she acknowledge your progress.
With time and consistent Lego placement, you’ll construct a relational framework that is unmistakable, undeniable, and very much appreciated. Don’t you agree that it’s better if your wife recognizes your progress of her own accord?
This approach reminds me of evangelism. I have never understood nor thought it prudent to do street-corner hellfire-and-damnation preaching. I don’t see how that message makes the gospel attractive. Demanding something from someone feels more like manipulation, whereas someone catching a glimpse of Jesus by the change in our life and being compelled to ask about it appears to be a better path. Perhaps it could help you to think about your trust-building journey in this way. The word evangelize originates in the Greek word euaggelizo, which means “to bring good news or glad tidings.” So you are actually bringing to your wife the good news of how God is developing your character as it is exhibited by your changed life—not in how well you can present your case. Remember the earlier section on spiritual fervency in chapter 7?
In honest self-assessment, can you say that your life has changed enough to be noticeable by the world around you? If the answer is no or maybe, you’ll need to press in and engage in a deeper way. And leave any self-promotion out of it!
INSIGHT FROM STEPHEN ARTERBURN
Humility
Another focus for you should be humility. Never brag about how bad you were, how far you’ve come, or how great you’re doing. Allow your life to speak for itself. Until you regain trust, your wife is watching what you do, not listening to what you say. When you stay humble, God will lift you up. Honor will come, and it will be authentic and real.
You know how disgusting and arrogant it is when others boast about their successes or accomplishments. Don’t be guilty of doing the same thing. More effectively than what you say or how you look, an attitude of humility will keep you safe. Arrogance will drag you out of the things you are doing well and convince you they are no longer needed.
Humility is your strongest link to reality and the honor that comes to those who stay the course.