What Happened to Happily Ever After?

ALL ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS begin with a contract—an unwritten, unspoken, never-discussed agreement that creates roles and rituals for the partners. This contract kills intimacy. Often, intimacy starts dying just several years into a relationship.

Every married couple has a contract. And just about every couple I’ve ever known—friends, family, neighbors, the thousands of couples I’ve worked with in therapy in the past twenty-five years, and the thousands more I’ve talked to at my marriage seminars across the United States—have the same contract.

My wife, Sandy, and I had this contract. I’ll bet you and your spouse had it and probably still have it. What’s it called?

This contract determines how we will live together. It creates specific, rigid roles for us to play. The roles lead to the rituals. It leaves no room for spontaneity and no room for creativity.

Each of us has a script to follow. Wives follow the female anti-intimacy script, and husbands follow the male anti-intimacy script. These scripts apply to every situation, every time of the day, every interaction, every conversation, every conflict, and every sexual encounter.

The female and male scripts—and the rituals that go with them—kill every single opportunity for intimacy. Most couples never achieve intimacy because these scripts create a predictable, boring relationship. Intimacy involves an element of unpredictability and spontaneity, but the rituals embedded in the scripts make us do the same old things the same old ways.

The scripts also kill intimacy by preventing emotional and spiritual connection. The rituals are mistakes—intimacy-killing mistakes—that keep the two of you at a distance and rob you of the heart-and-soul connection you each desperately need.

Are you ready for a description of the Standard, Anti-Intimacy Male-Female Marriage Contract? Good. Here we go. I think you will recognize yourself in it.

She is a sensitive, emotional, and caring soul with a big heart. She is intuitive and can identify the needs of others. She’s a real caregiver and spends a lot of time and energy meeting the needs of those close to her.

She is a talker and loves to open up and share personal information in her close relationships. No detail is unimportant when she’s telling a story because all the details reveal who she is inside.

Myth #1: Marriage will be a continuation of the wonderful excitement, romance, and intimacy of courtship.

No, it won’t be. Courtship is idealistic fantasy. Marriage is harsh reality. The truth is, your husband will start avoiding intimacy very soon after the wedding. Why? Because he’s a man, and that’s what men do.

Myth #2: If you keep meeting your husband’s needs, he will meet your needs.

No, he won’t. He’ll be happy and think you’re happy and that everything is fine in the marriage. The truth is, if you clean the house, take care of the kids, cook, and provide sex, he’ll be convinced you are the happiest wife in the world. Why? Because he’s a man, and that’s how men think.

Myth #3: Your wonderful husband will intuitively know what your needs are and take action to meet them.

No, also not true. The truth is, he has no idea what your needs are. He has no clue. Because he can’t identify your needs, he won’t do anything to meet them. Why? Because he’s a man, and he has the intuitive powers of a rock.

The wife has married a wonderful man. He does love her very much. But the fairy-tale marriage she deeply desires isn’t easy to achieve. If she hopes to create genuine intimacy with her husband, she has to toss out these myths and change her approach.

In the twenty-five years I’ve been a therapist, I have talked with a lot of wives in my Tampa therapy office and at my marriage seminars. I know how most wives think, feel, and act in their marriages. Plus, I’ve been married to Sandy since 1982. I’ve figured out that the female mind-set denies wives the intimacy with their husbands they desire and need.

The wife not only tries too hard to get close to her husband, she also tries in the same old ineffective ways. And she often allows her husband and others to mistreat her.

But her central and most critical mistake is that she lives in an idealistic, romantic world, a place where she strongly believes her husband ought to instinctively understand and meet her needs. I have heard these statements from so many wives:

• “Without my having to say a word, my man should just know what my needs are.”

• “It’s true love if my man figures out my heart’s desire on his own and sweeps me off my feet.”

• “Everything’s spoiled if I have to tell him my needs. All he has to do is pay attention. If he really cared, he’d just know.”

This female mind-set, particularly in the area of communicating needs, shows itself in conversations between wives and husbands all the time. Look at this example:

WIFE: [She’s at home and calls the man at work.] Honey, I feel really sick and shaky all over. I don’t know if I can make it through the day.

HUSBAND: I’m sorry, honey. Look, just relax and take it easy. Call the doctor if you need to. I’ll see you tonight.

WIFE: Thanks for nothing! I ask for some help and get the big kiss-off! You don’t care about me, do you?

HUSBAND: I do care. I love you. What can I do for you? What do you want?

WIFE: Oh, never mind. I’ll make it. [Hangs up.]

HUSBAND: [Thinking, What did I do wrong? He hears the musical theme from The Twilight Zone. Actually, it’s The Female Zone.]

Here’s what happened. The woman expected the man to come home and be with her. She thought she sent the message and that he deliberately ignored it.

Another woman would have heard, “Come home, please.” But not a man. Men are not intuitive. We miss the hidden message. If you want your husband to come home, you have to tell him, “Please come home. I need you here.”

Let’s listen to the same married couple a few weeks later. It’s Thursday evening and they are sitting on the couch in the living room:

WIFE: [She’s missing the man and wants some time with him.] Boy, this has been a busy week. We haven’t had much time together. [Hint, hint. She’s dying for him to say, “You want some time with me, don’t you? How about we spend some time right now talking? I’ll also take you out on Friday night on a date. I’ve missed you too.” Is that what he says? Are you kidding?]

HUSBAND: Yeah, it has been busy. Sure has. Some weeks are like that.

WIFE: [She’s disappointed and a little irritated. He didn’t get the message. He didn’t respond the way she wanted. She tries again with a little edge to her voice.] Have you really missed something this week—something important? [She’s talking about herself! It’s so obvious to her what she means. But not to him. Like a steer being led to the slaughter, the man doesn’t pick up on the difference in her voice. He doesn’t realize this is his last chance to get it.]

HUSBAND: Let me see. Yeah, honey, there were a few things I really missed. I missed the football game on television, and I missed the chance to clean the garage. That shows how busy I was.

WIFE: [She’s angry and hurt.] Well, it’s nice to know that a football game and the garage are more important to you than I am!

HUSBAND: [He now knows he’s in trouble, but he doesn’t know why or how it happened.] Huh? What are you so angry about? You asked me what I missed this week, and I told you.

WIFE: Exactly. I wanted to know if you missed me—you know, your wife—this week!

HUSBAND: Oh, well, sure I missed you. [The light has dawned, but it’s too little too late for this poor sucker. It’s gonna be a long night as he tries to convince the woman he does love her and he did miss her.]

The woman thinks she made it crystal clear that she wanted personal time with him. She didn’t! She didn’t say that. All he heard was that they’ve been busy and haven’t had much time together. He doesn’t make the leap to the real message of her wanting time with him and wanting to know if he missed her. Most men can’t make that leap.

Maybe, just maybe, a very sensitive man could decipher your code and come through for you in a miraculous way. But you didn’t marry a sensitive man. Frankly there aren’t many very sensitive men. Sandy didn’t marry one, either.

Unlike the wife, who thinks of everyone but herself, the husband thinks only about himself. When the man marries the woman, it’s a perfect match. She thinks about him and his needs, and he thinks about him and his needs. What could be better?

The husband figures, “Hey, we agree on the most important thing . . . my needs.” All the man asks is that his woman meet his three basic needs.

Most men live with the constant fear of not getting enough to eat. A man who eats well is a happy man. You’ve heard the saying “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Not really. It pretty much begins and ends with his stomach. When a man is full, he won’t give you his heart—just a belch and his empty plate.

The woman’s job (of course, everything is the woman’s job) is to make sure the man’s clothes are clean and put away in the proper place. This is in the United States Constitution. Even the Founding Fathers knew our country could not survive unless the women met the men’s clothing needs. It is nothing less than a catastrophe—second only to the woman having no clear plan for dinner—if the man cannot find a particular article of clothing when he needs it.

Here’s a case in point. All day long, as she has most days, the wife has done things for her husband. She prepared his breakfast, got the kids ready and off to school, worked at her own job, cleaned the home, went grocery shopping, cooked dinner, put the kids to bed, and listened to him talk about his day.

Late in the evening, the man lays out his clothes for the next day. He opens his sock drawer and freezes. Gasp! He cannot believe his shocked eyes. He doesn’t have any clean socks!

We know what happens at this point, don’t we? He goes to his wife and gently says, “Honey, you’ve done so much for me today. I’m embarrassed to even bring this up. I don’t seem to have any socks in my drawer. How can we solve this situation?”

Is that what he does? Not even close! The very second he sees there are no socks, he yells, “I don’t have any socks in my drawer!” Panic and exasperation fill his voice. This is a serious crisis situation. His life, his whole career, teeters in the balance!

Then he grouses around the place, mumbling to himself, “I don’t ask for much around here—just to have few clean socks in my drawer.” If he’s smart, he doesn’t mumble this loud enough for the woman to hear him.

What kind of selfish ingrate would have the nerve to complain about socks when the woman has done ten thousand other things for him that day? I’ll tell you who: me. I’ve pulled this stunt many times. I’m not proud of it. It’s a man thing I have to fight.

The husband’s final need will not come as a total shock to you ladies. Brace yourselves.

Women, you must understand the terrible truth about your man and sex. He thinks about sex once every seven seconds. He spends the other six seconds wondering why he’s not thinking about sex. When he wants sex, it becomes an obsession. It’s all he can think about. Whatever you are doing and however you are feeling makes no difference to him. He thinks, “Hey, you get to have sex with me. Isn’t that enough for you?” Pitiful, isn’t it?

When he feels the urge for sex—and it can strike without warning at any time of the day or night—he needs it as quickly as possible. In fact, if he can’t have sex within thirty minutes, something bad will happen. He’ll break out in a terrible rash. He’ll start shaking uncontrollably. He’ll be emotionally scarred. He’ll be physically damaged. He could explode because of the awesome pressure building up in his body. He could actually die! You don’t want to kill this poor man, do you?

Actually, this isn’t true. It takes forty-five minutes for these bad things to happen.

The real truth is that no man ever died or was permanently harmed from sex being delayed. This attitude toward sex is part of the male mentality that is embedded in most of us men.

These examples provide a clear picture of how the vast majority of husbands think, feel, and act in their marriages. This male mind-set robs a husband of closeness, denies him the respect and attention he craves, and deeply wounds the woman he loves.

The central, core weakness of the man is his selfishness. It’s all about him. The husband lives in a self-centered, logical world in which he expects his wife to meet his needs on demand. He is a master at avoiding intimacy. He actually has a deep need for intimacy but doesn’t realize it. Because of his insensitivity and ignorance of his wife’s needs, he unwittingly mistreats her over and over again.

Neither partner is being malicious. No one is intentionally trying to cause hurt and kill intimacy. The husband and wife are simply acting out roles that are determined by DNA and sex-role training.

These roles are born and made. It is genetic. God made us this way. The female and male mind-sets and the mistakes that result come naturally. They’re automatic. They’re unconscious. They’re just what we do.

Also, and very importantly, our parents and others in our childhood provided an early and intensely influential education concerning these roles. Moms and other women teach little girls the female mind-set. Dads and other men teach little boys the male mind-set.

In about ten to fifteen percent of marriages, these roles are reversed. This is perfectly normal. The principles in the following chapters will still apply and help you if you are in this group. Just reverse the sexes.

Breaking out of these anti-intimacy roles is difficult, but you must do it or you’ll be stuck with a mediocre marriage at best. Mediocre marriages become miserable marriages. Miserable marriages don’t glorify God. They drain all the life and joy out of both partners. And they often end in divorce.

Whether you’ve been married two years or forty-two years, there is a way out. A way to revive your marriage. Perhaps to bring it back from the dead. To get out of the boring rut it’s been in. To be joyful. To be closer than you’ve ever been. To be passionate. To enjoy great sex.

1. Wife, when you got married, which of the three myths about men and marriage did you believe? Do you still believe any of these myths? If so, why?

2. Wife, can you relate to the female mindset of expecting your husband to know your needs without your making them clear to him? Why do you think you use the special code?

3. Husband, can you relate to the male mind-set of being selfish? Can you admit that, most of the time, you think of yourself and your needs first? Why do you think you do this?

4. Husband, can you admit that you avoid intimacy with your wife? Why do you work so hard to avoid it?