I want to wrap up this mini-series talking about something else
that we all tend to do when our love tanks run dry. This isn’t so much something
to help us overcome the problem, as it is something we need to watch out for,
when we find ourselves in that state.
Everyone, men and women alike, talk to their friends about
their problems. While women tend to open up more and faster with other women
than men do, once men have a true friend, they’ll open up with them. In fact,
we’ll say things to our friends that we try to avoid saying to our wives. Sometimes,
those things are things that we really should say to our wives, but we don’t
say them to avoid strife or avoid hurting her feelings.
Okay, so what’s the purpose of talking to our friends about
our problems? Let’s be more specific than that what’s the purpose of talking to
our friends about our marriage problems? Are we doing it as a means to seek out
an answer, or are we just complaining?
While we might think that we’re talking in order to find a
solution to our problem, in reality there’s more of a complaint aspect to it
than anything else. Somehow, we all instinctively think that complaining about
it is going to help, and might just help us find an answer as well. But, as I
said, the real goal is more to complain, than it is to seek a problem.
Now c’mon, who really thinks that they’re going to find a
solution to their marriage problems by talking them over with their buddies who
have the same problems? Most of us form friendships with people who are at roughly
the same level of life as we are. That means that they probably are dealing with
similar issues in their own lives. Oh, there might be something every once in a
while where they’re a bit ahead of us, but most of the time they’re not.
If we were truly seeking an answer, we’d talk to somebody
who knows about what we’re dealing with, not our friends. We’d go to our
mentor, pastor or counselor, rather than to speak with our fishing buddy. Those
people are much more likely to have a solution to offer us, having been there
before and dealt with the problem.
Let me make it simple. If we want a solution, we seek out
somebody who has the experience and knowledge to have that solution. If the
only people we talk to about our problems are our friends, then we really aren’t
looking for a solution.
There’s another aspect of this that’s very important.
Whatever we do, we don’t want to be making our wives look bad before others.
Often, our friends are married to our wife’s friends. So, we tell our buddies
about our problems with our wives; they tell their wives; and their wives tell
our wives. All we’ve accomplished is to damage her reputation. Not cool.
We need to protect our wife’s reputation, not go around
damaging it. Regardless of how we feel, we are responsible for protecting her.
That means protecting all aspects of her, including her reputation.
