Early in our marriage I can recall several conversations that went like this:
I: [exasperated] ‘Honey, just tell me what you want me to do, when and how, and I’ll do it. keep it simple I want you to be happy. If you are happy, I will be happy.
My wife: [livid] But you are missing the point.
I: “I am confused, frustrated and angry.”
My wife: I can’t help you understand that it’s about more than just doing what I want you to do.
Fortunately, at some point, I solved the problem with the attitude of ‘I just want to be shown’. As we discussed it recently, my wife and I deduced that it must have been a realization in me through marriage counseling. I can’t thank God enough. It has been a game changer in our marriage.
Having counseled dozens of people and couples now, there’s a general trend that suggests that when marriages are in trouble (and all marriages have rough patches), a large proportion of the time men just want to know what to do, how and how to do it. when to do it Reduce marital interactions to a kind of formula.
Frustrated, we resort to the easiest and most direct way to solve the problem. We are even willing to submit to doing what we would rather not do in order to keep our wives happy. And many times, we are confused as to why this frustrates our wives. Do you not see our sacrifice? Yes, they see the sacrifice and they see through it.
While it sounds noble on the surface to be prepared to do whatever it takes, I’m sure most women (and some men) reading this will see the flaw in this approach.
Can’t motivate. When someone says, ‘just tell me what to do,’ they’re essentially saying, ‘I’m leaving; you lost me.’ We may think this is what our wives want to hear, but it’s exactly what they don’t want to hear, for it underscores that our love comes down to checking boxes on a list.
Still:
All they need to see from us is the desire to understand.
If we want to understand, sooner or later the penny will fall.
When we finally understand, our hearts begin to change.
When two hearts are engaged in marriage, both seek first to understand the other rather than to be understood themselves.
Above all, marriage is about two adults behaving like adults. Any time a couple says, ‘Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it,’ we can sense that something is wrong with their commitment to intimacy within marriage. As spouses, we want our partner to want to do this or that, and certainly to be creative in the way they love us.
None of us wants a love so cheap that it’s done just because we need it.
We want it to come from the heart of our partner, because they wanted to, not because of the pressure we put on them to do what we want, because we know that is not love. And no couple should settle for cheap love that really isn’t love at all. It is a false love.
It is behavior that looks like love but does not feel like love.