THERE ARE TWO myths in the Christian community—and popular culture—that can prevent wives from developing intimate marriages. Well-meaning authors, radio personalities, clueless celebrities, church members, and even pastors keep these myths alive. If you believe either, you are doomed to always have a husband who is unable to meet the important needs God built into women.
Myth #1:
Just Keep on Loving Him, and He’ll Change
This myth proclaims that if you keep on faithfully loving him and meeting his needs, he will eventually respond by meeting your needs. Supposedly you don’t have to say a word (though you may have already said too many); just focus on being positive and cheerful while doing everything you can to make him happy. Unable to resist your steady outpouring of love, he will spend the rest of his life making you feel cherished and close to him.
This approach is a complete misunderstanding of a man’s nature. He doesn’t even realize he isn’t meeting your needs. Unless you tell him, he will literally never know. If he sees you acting content, he will assume you are content. Because you continue doing all the usual things for him, he remains convinced that you are happy and everything in your marriage is fine. It never dawns on him that you are dying a slow death from lack of intimacy—the kind you knew and loved when you were dating.
By the way, how is the “change him with love and kindness” approach working? You’ve been at it now for a number of years. Yeah, I thought so. Not changing, is he? You may be wondering if there is any truth to the words of 1 Peter 3:1–2: “In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.”
These verses teach submission, not subservience or passivity. Although a wife is always to model purity and excellent behavior, she is also to follow the verses that instruct her to speak up in a loving, firm way. The Proverbs 31 wife, a wonderful model for all wives, was very assertive and active, and her husband respected her. He “trusts in her” (v. 11). Other passages teach that we should confront sin (Matt. 18:15–17) and speak the truth (Eph. 4:15; Col. 3:9). The bottom line: When you look at the whole of Scripture, you see God instructing wives to model submission and excellent behavior and to be assertive and worthy of respect.
Myth #2:
He’s Doing the Best He Can
This second myth tells you that your man isn’t that bad and that you will be OK if he doesn’t change. Right now you may be trying to reassure yourself, “He’s a good man. He works hard at his job. He goes to church. He doesn’t beat me, drink like a fish, or sleep around. He could be a lot worse. I have to accept the fact that he won’t change. I can live with that.”
You have given up hope of having a deeper, more intimate bond with your man. His lack of openness and communication does hurt you, but you think they can’t be helped. So you paint on your brave smile and keep walking on that long, lonely road toward the horizon.
Some older wives in your church family or social circle may have convinced you that the man you have is as good as he can get. They have persuaded you that men are “just that way,” and you can do nothing about it. For good measure they may have thrown in the classic enabler line: “Honey, you just have to make Jesus your husband.”
These two myths are wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You are sadly mistaken if you believe your husband will change because of your excellent behavior. You are also in error if you believe your husband can’t change and is incapable of meeting your needs. In either case you are part of the problem. You are enabling him to remain exactly the kind of husband he is now. Since he is convinced that you are OK with the way he is, he feels zero motivation to do anything differently.
If you have bought into one of these two myths, it is time to wake up, smell the coffee, and see the truth. It’s time for another approach—one that has a very good chance of turning your man into a great husband who knows how to be truly intimate with you.
An Ephesians 5:25 Husband
God makes it very clear what kind of husband He wants your husband to be:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.
—EPHESIANS 5:25
How did Christ love the church? How does Christ continue to love the church? With gentleness, care, nurturing, and selfless service. By listening, connecting, and meeting every important need. IA husbands don’t love this way. Indeed they cannot because in their present state they are not able to open up, talk, understand, and communicate beyond a surface level.
God Will Use You to Help Your Husband Change
God may have created your husband with a rather stoic nature, but He doesn’t want him to remain this way. God wants him to become an Ephesians 5:25 husband, but your husband doesn’t even know he has a problem with intimacy! How in the world is he going to become a sensitive, loving, and Christlike spouse? There is only one way. I am convinced God wants to use you to help your husband change. That is why He brought you together.
Working with wives to influence their husbands is a huge part of what I do in my clinical psychology practice. One of my specialties is guiding them through the process of helping their spouses become godly men who can express their personal thoughts and feelings, communicate on deeper levels, and meet needs. Even if their husbands never darken the door of my therapy office, never read one of my books, and never attend one of my marriage seminars, these wives—with God’s help and power—can create amazing changes in their husbands. So can you.
To begin the process of “IA Husband Transformation,” you need two things.
• To understand what makes a man intimacy-challenged
• A proven strategy to change him into the husband you need him to be, and for you to be changed into the wife that he needs you to be
He Was Born That Way
Your husband was intimacy-challenged from the point of conception, during the nine months he spent inside momma, and when he took his first breath and screamed because someone slapped his little intimacy-challenged bottom. God used testosterone and creative brain wiring to gear his entire personality toward action not communication. By nature, men are doers, not talkers. Women are born talkers and would rather talk than do anything else. My wife, Sandy, and I have observed this dramatic difference between the sexes among our four children. Emily, Leeann, and Nancy came first. Finally God gave us William. The girls love to talk. They live to talk. There aren’t enough hours in the day to handle all their words. Leeann and Nancy even talk in their sleep!
My girls talk with us and with each other. They talk on the phone with their friends. They talk on the computer in long, expressive e-mails and via Facebook. At home I haven’t spoken on the phone or used my computer for two years. I can’t get on either one! Their supply of conversational information is endless. My Emily will spend three hours with some friends at a party, talking the whole time. When she gets home, she’ll immediately go to the computer so she can talk with these same friends about what they just talked about for three hours at the party!
My girls jump from topic to topic. Every topic, no matter how trivial, is important because it can lead to a whole chain reaction of interesting conversational tidbits. Here is a recent conversation—I should say monologue—I had with Leeann:
Dad, that’s a nice shirt you have on. Is that a light green stripe? My girlfriend Bobbi was wearing a skirt two weeks ago with a light green stripe. She got in trouble with her mom because her skirt was too short. They had a bad argument out by their pool. The pool was dirty, so her mom blamed her for that too. Her little dog, Fluffy, a white and brown wiener dog who has kidney problems, came running up just then and tried to jump into her arms. Bobbi didn’t see her coming, so she jerked back in surprise, and Fluffy jumped right into the pool. It was hilarious!
You know, I saw another dog last Thursday that looked like Fluffy. By the way, did I mention that I saw Fluffy once? Bobbi brought her to school one morning. That was the same morning I broke my favorite yellow hairbrush. I loved that hairbrush. Anyway, this other dog was wearing a cute little red and black checked vest. My friend Ashley had bought that same kind of vest last March when we were shopping at the mall. Can you believe that? I remember that the salesperson had bright purple hair, a nose ring, and a bad attitude. She was rude to Ashley and me. Oh, there were so many weird things that happened that day at the mall! We were just getting dropped off at the entrance by her mom when . . .
This was just the first two and a half minutes of the conversation. Leeann was just warming up! I don’t have room to put on paper the other twenty minutes. Can you see how important it was to notice the light green stripe? Women talk the way paleontologists create prehistoric animal models for museums. From one chipped tooth these scientists build an entire dinosaur. Women can construct an entire conversation from one tiny, inconsequential fact. Amazing!
And then God created William. And then there was destruction. And then there was yelling, running, climbing, wild laughter, and loud animal noises. And constant activity. Like almost all boys—and men—seven-year-old William is a doer. From the moment he wakes up at the crack of dawn (he slept in an extra hour exactly two days in his first seven years) to the moment he finally goes to sleep at night, William is doing something. He plays video games, computer games, rides his bike, swims in the pool, engages in every outdoor sport known to mankind with his buddies, plays board games and card games, and bugs his sisters. If he watches television or a movie, it had better be sports-oriented or filled with nonstop, dramatic action.
William talks, but only about four things: what he has done, what he is doing right now, what he is going to do, and sports. If he’s not doing something, he is miserable. He can’t stand sitting around and talking. He hates chick movies. He is not sensitive. Understanding his sisters and their feelings isn’t even on his radar screen. He just wants to play, play, play, and do, do, do.
Like nearly all women, girls talk because they have a God-given need to connect with others and develop closeness in their relationships. Like most men, William is a doer because he has a God-given need to compete with others and maintain control in relationships. If William is going to be a good husband some day, he will have to learn to open up and communicate with a woman. While Sandy and I are trying to teach him these skills, it is an uphill battle. It goes against his nature. He just doesn’t get it . . . yet.
He Was Raised That Way
IA men aren’t just born. They are also made. Chances are your husband’s parents raised him to be this way. Now, they didn’t sit down and plan it this way: “We want little Timmy to become a good, solid, intimacy-challenged husband, so here is what we each have to do to make sure that happens.” Yet Mom and Dad still got the job done. He’s intimacy-challenged, isn’t he?
Take a close look at your husband’s father. I bet you will see an intimacy-challenged man—your husband’s original role model. Just as a master craftsman teaches his apprentice, your father-in-law taught your husband the proud, honorable trade of avoiding intimacy. Through years of modeling he trained his son to carry on the family pattern. He passed the anti-intimacy torch to the next generation.
Your husband probably never—and I mean that literally—saw a significant man in his life share something personal. It just didn’t happen. Dad didn’t do it. Nor did his grandfathers. Not his brother, nor Uncle Harry, nor any of his male teachers or coaches. So he learned not to share personal things with other men, and certainly not with women.
What he did observe, repeatedly for many years, was Dad and other key men in his life choke back emotions, stuff personal reactions, refuse to answer personal questions posed by women, say as little as possible and stick to the facts, be logical, avoid conflicts, and show emotion only when watching sports.
Chances are your husband also saw his mom and dad develop and maintain a marriage devoid of real intimacy. It was a marriage of an IA and an IA Enabler. He saw his mom carry on bravely for years, enabling her intimacy-avoiding husband and acting as if everything was OK. The truth was she felt unhappy and terribly unfulfilled, just as you feel now. However, your husband couldn’t discern his mother’s pain. He thought—and still does—that his parents’ marriage was “fine.” He actually believes the relationship they had (and still may have) is as good as it gets.
He will say things such as:
• “They had a good marriage.”
• “They got along.”
• “They never fought.”
• “They built a solid, stable life together.”
Wonderful. Doesn’t sound too exciting and passionate, does it? Yet if his parents got divorced or had obvious trouble in their marriage, he would probably have no idea why. Is it any wonder he does not know how to be intimate with you? All the men he grew up around modeled IA behavior. As a result, he never saw a man and a woman engage in a personal, deep conversation. He’s never experienced emotional intimacy with another person. He has no idea what it takes to get it or how to achieve it. All he knows is how to avoid intimacy. He has those skills down cold. After all, he was trained by the best.
Shaped By Culture
As if all this wasn’t enough—and believe me, it is—American culture finishes the job of making your man resist intimacy in relationships. Read this brief list of movie stars and picture the kind of men they have portrayed on screen:
• John Wayne
• Sylvester Stallone
• Humphrey Bogart
• Harrison Ford
• Robert Mitchum
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Clint Eastwood
• Bruce Willis
It’s an easy exercise, isn’t it? These stars have played open, sensitive, romantic, gentle, and caring men. Men who share their feelings openly, without shame or defensiveness. Men who have made it their primary goal in life to tenderly meet the needs of the women in their lives. Yeah, right!
All these actors have played hard-edged, macho, tough-as-steel, independent, and emotionally distant men. The only emotion they’ve displayed is anger at their on-screen enemies. They don’t talk much and don’t bother with romance. They keep personal thoughts and feelings to themselves. Through the power of film these “movie star IAs” have taught generations of men that remaining in control and emotionless is what manhood is all about. It may work in the movies, but it doesn’t work in marriage.
Movies aren’t the only medium that helps shape a man’s view of self. American culture pushes men to avoid intimacy by placing a massive emphasis on career success. If you’re not making serious money in a high-profile, impressive job in America, you’re a loser. A hapless, pitiful loser. Newspapers, magazines, Internet sites, and TV news shows profile corporate CEOs and entrepreneurs who have amassed power, fame, and fortune. Most of these men are workaholics who have gone through two or three wives and left damaged children in their wake. But who cares? They’re rich! They’ve made it! They’re real men!
Most men feel insecure because of this unrelenting cultural pressure to succeed in their careers and provide for their families. Unlike women, who can define themselves as wives and mothers, men have only careers to define them. With few relationship skills, men are unable to get their needs met from wives, children, or friends. By default they are forced to focus on their jobs in order to feel some sense of accomplishment and success.
Men cover their insecurities by putting up a tough, confident exterior. They talk only about superficial subjects in which they feel competent: work, the stock market, sports, cars, things that need fixing, current events, politics, or the weather. Even when men talk to other men, few say anything deep or personal. They stick with what they know and feel safe talking about. They stay in control and unconnected to others.
Escape From Relationship Prison
Well, you have your work cut out for you. As you can see, there are powerful forces that created and continue to keep your husband a person who shuns closeness in relationships. In a very real sense your husband is imprisoned behind huge walls that shut his inner life off from the outside world—specifically from you. His prison has bigger walls and better security than the infamous Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help your man break out of his prison and join you in the land of emotion, expression, and communication. Remember, he doesn’t even realize he is locked up! But he is, and breaking out will be good for him, you, and your children. Once he gets a taste of intimacy, he is going to want it. You have to give him that taste.
A “Mission Impossible” Strategy
How can you pull off this seemingly impossible mission? With God’s help and the right strategy. Here’s a brief overview of my seven-step Husband Transformation Strategy:
Step one: “I need a team.”
You need a team alongside to help your husband change. A team will provide strength, accountability, and endurance. With God, your church, and a few close friends, you have the foundation in place to launch the mission.
Step two: “This is exactly the kind of husband I need you to be.”
Chances are close to 100 percent that your husband has no idea of your real needs. It is time to tell him exactly what you have needed over the years—and still need—from him. But it won’t be only the needs you think you have. It will be the needs God says your husband is to meet.
Step three: “Honey, I need to forgive you.”
In order to team up with your husband in this change process, you must release all the pent-up bitterness and hurt clogging your insides. On paper you will vent—in complete detail—the resentments you have harbored against him from the day you met to the day you write this letter. You will also forgive him for everything, intentional and unintentional, he has said or done to harm you. Without asking for or expecting a response, you will regularly tell him (honestly and directly) your needs and reactions to his treatment of you. This will model expression of emotions and keep your emotional system clean and your needs ever before him.
Step four: “I need to know how I am killing our intimacy.”
It is very likely you are acting in ways that prevent your husband from opening up. Unwittingly you could be helping your husband stay locked up, which is the last thing you want to do. You need to discover these mistakes and stop making them.
Step five: “This is exactly the kind of wife I need to be.”
God has communicated a specific set of instructions in the Bible for wives. He knows what your husband needs from you, so listen to Him. First, God says be submissive. I will cover what submission does and doesn’t mean. Second, God says be worthy of respect. Third, God says initiate affection and sex.
Step six: “I need your help to heal from my past pain.”
Your unresolved pain from the past affects you in the present. It transfers to your marital relationship and limits the intimacy you can achieve. As you work through your pain and include your husband in the process, two things happen: 1) you heal and automatically become a better wife, and 2) your husband can finally connect with you on a deeper level and get in touch with his own emotions.
Step seven: “I need to get tough and rattle your cage.”
If steps one through six don’t change your husband, you have an industrial strength IA on your hands. You’re going to have to bring out the big, biblical guns. Your husband is sinning, and he must now face consequences and confrontation.
Yes, your good man can become a great husband. How? By the two of you relying on God and carrying out these seven steps. Do these steps in order. Don’t skip any.
Many wives have followed this strategy and seen tremendous results. Now it is your turn. By the time you finish working through the seven steps, there is a good chance there will be one less intimacy-challenged man in the world and one more great marriage.