Hear Her Out

Two of the biggest complaints that women have about their husbands involve communication. The first of these is that we don’t spend enough time talking to them. The second one is that we don’t listen to what they say. In defense of men, I have to say that women aren’t any better at listening to their husbands than men are in listening to their wives; nevertheless, the complaint persists, and with reason.

Most men take the words “we have to talk” as being some of the most dangerous words their wife can say. That’s because women don’t use that key phrase, unless they have something major to say. “Something major” usually ends up being an attack on their husband in one way or another.

So, how do we, as men, handle that? Most of the time, by avoidance. Yes, we’re pretty good at avoiding any sort of verbal confrontation with our wives; probably because they are more verbally agile than we are, and have the ability to chop us up in little pieces with their tongues. Nevertheless, avoidance really doesn’t solve anything, all it does is prolong the problem, allowing it to grow.

Then, when we finally do sit down with them to let them get whatever it is off their chest, we have a tendency to get angry or frustrated and storm off, ending the conversation before she’s done. Once again, this provides the same results; that of not allowing her to say what she needs to say.

We have to realize that women need to talk for the purpose of getting things off their chest, more than for the purpose of getting resolution to the problem. A woman who is complaining about her marriage isn’t necessarily looking for a solution; the fact of talking about it is therapeutic in itself. However, this doesn’t mean that we should never take what they say seriously. Often, hidden within the great volume of words they use to complain, there are some facts that we really need to pay attention to.

Unfortunately, finding those facts requires really listening to what they say. I say unfortunately, because often times in those serious discussions, they say a lot of destructive things. So, to hear the important stuff, we have to suffer through allowing them to chew us up and spit us out.

Okay, so how do we do this? The biggest secret is to not take it personally. I know that’s almost impossible, but many women reflect problems in their lives onto their husbands. Their boss doesn’t hear them at work, so they say that their husband doesn’t hear them. They think they’re fat or ugly (almost all women think this) so they say that their husband thinks they are fat or ugly. They think that they’re not good lovers, so they say that their husband’s sexual expectations are too high. The list goes on and on.

Remember, the world is constantly telling her that she’s not good enough. Advertising is aimed at making her dissatisfied with herself, so that she’ll buy products which make her “better.” She feels that she has to complete with every Hollywood starlet, Playboy centerfold and supermodel to be considered “adequate.” While that isn’t true to us as husbands, that’s the message she’s receiving. Many times, the message she’s giving us is coming from those other messages she’s receiving.

So, in addition to not taking it personally, or maybe to help in not taking it personally, try to figure out where she’s really coming from. While that can be really challenging, it’s necessary nevertheless. That’s where we find the facts that we need to.

At the same time, we have to realize that none of us is perfect. Some of what she complains about may be legitimate complaints about how we aren’t meeting our obligations as men. If she complains about some part of the house being in disrepair, we should take it seriously; after all, that’s part of our responsibility. No, we don’t have to jump up from the conversation to immediately fix that thing, but we should put it on our to-do list and make sure it gets done.

More than anything, keep your cool and hear her out. She needs that. Taking the time to hear her out does a lot to building up your marriage, even while you feel like it’s tearing you down. You’re bigger than that. You can get over being torn down. But she can’t get over not being heard. 

An Island of Calm, in the Midst of Her Storm

Life is full of unexpected problems. Everything can be going along just fine, when all of a sudden, it all goes haywire. You know what I mean, it’s happened to you; it happens to all of us. It even happens to your wife. Actually, it probably happens to your wife, more than it happens to you.

How you react and what you do when your wife hits one of those moments can have a lot to do with how well and how easily she manages to get through it. You can be a support to her in those critical times, becoming an anchor for her life, when everything else seems to be going crazy.

As men, we have a little bit of trouble understanding our wife’s emotions. We have emotions as well, but they don’t affect us as much as they do our wives. Most of the time we bury our emotions so deep that we don’t even see them ourselves, let alone anyone else seeing them. We are much more comfortable with our thoughts about things than we are with our feelings about them.

It’s much different for women. In most cases, they don’t have a whole lot of control over their emotions. In fact, they feel more like their emotions are more in control of them, instead of them being in control of their emotions. When things go wrong, it’s not uncommon for a woman to feel like she’s adrift in an ocean of emotions, with no control over the rudder.

That’s where you need to come in. She needs you to be her “safe anchorage,” an island of calm in the midst of her storm. She need someplace where she can go and know that she’ll be safe, no matter how much the storm of her emotions tells her otherwise.

Your ability to remain calm in the midst of a problem makes a huge difference to your wife. Even more than that, your ability to focus on the Lord and on the help you can expect to receive from Him, gives her an anchor for her own faith.

It’s easy to forget about the Lord in a moment of crisis. Yet, if there is ever a time when we need to put our eyes on Him, that’s the time. True spiritual leadership always brings people to the Lord. If all you do is to have her come to you, you’ve only done half the job. Once she comes to you, then you take her with you to the Lord, placing the situation before Him.

Yes, be that safe harbor for her. But, the best way of doing that is by putting your faith in the Lord. With your confidence in Him, you can always find the answer to your wife’s need. You can always be that island of calm in the midst of her storm. You can always help her through. 

One of the major complaints that women make about their husbands is that there isn’t enough communication in the marriage. Of course, this is always the man’s fault, regardless of any other consideration. But, what do they really mean by that?

In actuality, that complaint is multi-faceted. One part of it is that us guys don’t talk much about our feelings, about what’s going on in our hearts. That’s a big deal for women, and how they validate their relationships. When we don’t talk about those things, it seems to them like we are blocking them out of our lives.

In defense of men, I have to say that most of us don’t really think about those things all that much, so its’ no wonder we don’t share those feelings with our wives. While we do have feelings, we just don’t think about them all that much. So, I guess from a woman’s point of view, we’re blocking ourselves out of this part of our lives as well (not that I necessarily agree with them).

The second part of this complaint is the difference between pre-marital and post-marital communications. Before the wedding, everything is dreams; how wonderful our married life is going to be. After the wedding, conversation switches to reality; all the problems we face in life. Obviously, that talk about dreams is much more fun than dealing with reality. But, it has another aspect as well, that of showing what’s in the person’s heart. Women need that open window.

Nevertheless, it’s the third aspect of this that I want to talk about right now. That is that we all reach a point where we stop listening to their complaints. You know how it is, you walk in the door, after a rough day at work, and your wife gives you a litany of everything that went wrong during the day. That’s the last thing you want to hear, more problems; so, you tune her out.

Hey, I’ve been there, done that and burned the T-shirt (it wasn’t worth keeping). So, I fully understand how hard it is to sit there and listen to a list of problems, after spending the whole day dealing with problems. It always seemed to me (and I’m sure it seems the same to you) like she was dumping a whole new load of problems on my back, that I had to spend the whole evening dealing with; and all I wanted to do was relax!

Let me tell you a secret. For 99% of the things that she complains about in that laundry list of problems, she doesn’t expect you to do anything. That’s right. Even though it seems like she’s dumping all her problems on you, so that you’ll do something about them, she really isn’t. She doesn’t need you to do anything.

You see, as men, we’re fixers. When there’s something broken, we need to fix it. It doesn’t matter if we know how to fix it or not, there’s something in us that says “Fix it now!” So, when she complains about her job, we tell her to quit and find another job. When she complains about the neighbor’s dog pooping in her flower bed, we mentally look for our shotgun, so that we can shoot the dog. When she says that Johnny’s teacher sent a note home with him, we think about beating Johnny (or the teacher). For every complaint, we automatically come up with a solution, whether or not it’s practical.

Now, there are a few exceptions. If little Johnny is being rebellious and not obeying mommy, you need to back her up and deal with Johnny. If the washing machine has broken down, you’d better come up with a repair or a repair man, one or the other. But, except for those “important” things, you can blow off the rest of it. She isn’t expecting you to do a thing.

You see, that time of relating all her woes to you is therapeutic for her. It gives her the chance to get it off her chest and out of her heart. She needs that. If she doesn’t get it, she ends up holding all that junk in her heart, where it eats away at her like a cancer. You don’t want that to happen.

When she doesn’t get the opportunity to unload her heart, and stores all those things up, you’ve got to realize that they’re going to come out sometime. When you least expect it, you’ll walk through the door and say, “Hi Honey, I’m home” and she’ll explode. Instead of being greeted by your sweet loving wife, you’ll be met by an angry monster that looks like she’s going to serve you for dinner, instead of serve you dinner.

Of course, if you don’t want to invest the time to listen to her tale of woe, there is an option. You can pay a shrink $100.00 per hour (or more) to do it for you. That saves you having to hear about all those problems. Of course, paying for that privilege may cause a few more problems, but hey, it’s worth it, right? Uh, I’m not so sure about that.

Let your wife talk. Be that attentive ear that she needs. Let her get it off her chest; just don’t hold it in yours. Instead of accepting everything she says as something that you need to deal with, let it be like rainwater on a duck’s back, rolling right off of you. That way, neither of you are carrying the problem. 

Just Take Care of It

In case you haven’t noticed, life is full of problems. Yes, it’s true, no matter how hard we try and avoid them, those problems seem to find us, seed us out and try to ruin our lives. At times, it might even seem like that’s all life is, just one problem after another.

How do you deal with problems? Are you good at it, or do you moan and complain? Are you able to make a big problem into a small one; or are you known for making every mole hill into a mountain? You know, dealing with problems is a lot of what being a man is all about.

Think about it for a moment. When you come home from work, and your wife starts complaining about her day (yeah, I know, that’s never any fun), how do you react? If you’re like most guys, you suffer through it, making little comments to tell your wife how to fix the problem. You do it without even thinking about it. That’s just part of our makeup as men; we are problem solvers.

Okay, so if you are created to be a problem solver, why do you have to make a big deal about it? Sometimes, we act like the chicken who laid an egg; having to let the whole world know that we’re facing a problem or that we’ve just solved one. Why?

Granted, we all want recognition and appreciation, that’s part of being human. But, that’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about is that by our talking about it, we can often make that problem bigger in our wife’s eyes than it really is. That doesn’t help anything. In fact, it hurts things. It gives her more stress. It gives her more to worry about; and it distracts her from things that need her attention (like you).

Why not just fix the problem, without making a big deal out of it? Why not keep the problem under the radar, while you’re fixing it, so that she doesn’t have to worry? Why not do what you do best and fix the problem, without letting her know that there’s anything to worry about?

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not advocating keeping things from her that you should tell her about. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t tell her that you lost your job or that there’s no money to pay the mortgage. That’s not what I mean. Those are important issues that she has every right to know about. No, what I’m talking about is the little stuff. The nuisance stuff that just saps our time and energy. The little stuff that people worry about, even though it’s really not all that important. That stuff.

Nor am I saying that you should treat her like a child, not letting her know about what is happening. Don’t do the macho, “I’m in control here, I’ll take care of it, you go back to the kitchen” routine. All that does is offend her, making her feel like she’s being treated like a child or a slave. That doesn’t help anything either. If she already knows about it, let her in on the solutions too. 

You see, most of that is stuff you can deal with, without bothering your wife about it. That way, she can be stress and worry free, knowing that you’ve got it under control. When you make a big deal out of it, you give her reason to worry; you give her reason for insecurity; you plant fear in her heart. But, when you take care of it, you make her feel protected; that’s a whole lot better.