First, this post is for men. My hope is you will find encouragement to do the hard things to make your marriage work. Women – feel free to read. However, this is NOT intended for you to use against your husband as a battering ram.
Here’s the skinny – if you marriage isn’t working, it’s probably your fault.
I use the word “probably” above because there are some rare (but few in my opinion) situations where this is not true.
Let’s kick this off with some scriptures.
Genesis 3:16 (NIV)
Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.
By sharing this verse, I am not trying to give you more reason to try and treat your wife as a slave … or to “put her in her place.” If you have this attitude, then we’ve already discovered your problem. Stop here … ask God to forgive you for your sins of treating your wife badly, then come back and finish reading.
By sharing this verse, I am pointing out a responsibility that God has placed on man. To “rule over” our wives should not be equaled with “king of the world.” Rather, it should point out how much God is going to hold you responsible for your wife and everything about her. So, our role comes with a GREAT responsibility.
Check out these verses from the NT:
Ephesias 5:21, 25 – 27 (NLT)
And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
…
For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault.
I skipped verses 22 – 24 on purpose. Those verses talking about the wife submitting to the husband, but your focus shouldn’t be on what she is supposed to do, but rather on what you are supposed to do. And even if we were to discuss this, how you understand submission may be totally wrong any way. My wife does a great job of explaining this. Maybe she will someday, and then, I’ll point you to her post.
My reason for going here today is because of some wise counsel I received early on. Someone was telling me about words of wisdom he had heard from some other guy about the man’s role in marriage. Let me try to get this straight …
Man: My wife is the most irritating person in the world. She nags at me all the time. She’s always picking fights with me. She doesn’t show me any respect ever. She’s just impossible to be around.
Counselor: Why would you marry a woman like that?
Man: She wasn’t like that when I married her.
Counselor: Then, what did you do to her?
Point of this story: If we follow the guidance from Ephesians 5 above – “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church” - we will have a thousand more reasons for loving our wives today than we had when we got married. We will be able to say, “This is not the woman I married” and be glad about it … and her too. Because she will be EVEN MORE the woman that God wants her to be.
BOTTOM LINE:
If your marriage is rocky, if your wife is more irritating to you than you like, if it seems she is just out to make you miserable … you should probably stop trying to find her faults and get out your mirror. If you will truly practice what is written in Ephesians 5 above, I firmly believe that over time, you will begin to see just how beautiful and lovely your wife truly is. Your attitude affects her attitude! Simple as that …
Practical advice:
- Stop being selfish. Better yet, practice being selfless.
- Fix your faults. Don’t even focus on her faults.
If you think you don’t have faults, talk to me for a little bit, and I’ll help you find them.
- Pray to God. Ask him to show you your faults. Ask him for strength.
You will need strength as you begin to recognize and accept your role as husband. - Read some books. There are plenty of great ones out there. Start with “The Five Love Languages” maybe.
- Work, work, work on your marriage. If you want it to be good, then you will work.
- Gather godly men around you to pray for you and to hold you accountable for your actions toward your wife.
Bottom line for me is … if things aren’t good at home, it’s usually my fault. If I find out what I am doing wrong and work on that … my marriage always seems to improve. Go figure.
I think you will find the same thing to be true for you.
Go with God,
Donald B
Great post!
“if you marriage isn’t working, it’s probably your fault.”
Is the reverse also true? If it is working can I take credit?
That’s a great point! However, I give you this as a reference to answer that question:
Proverbs 16:18 (ESV)
Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall.
A guy can’t catch a break.
I will say the following things:
1. My wife has changed, and has been changed negatively (more critical, less able to have fun), but become a mother and by her job. I have treid to make this an equal marriage, and I think that have been a mistake, because our definitions of “equal” seem to be different.
2. I do pray for God’s guidance, and your statements came from a search I made as a result of that prayer. God bless you for writing this.
3. I guess I will be treating this experience as a bicycle, and just hop back on and keep trying. One lesson for any single men out there reading this, marriage is not the ending of a stressful situation (I am not married, I am alone!), but the replacement of that stress with a new one ( I am RESPONSIBLE for more people, wife/children, and must always live up to that new higher expectation.) This is why married folks will sometimes tell their single friends “You are so lucky that you are not married!”.
4. In my case, I get criticized until I get angry, and then get criticized for getting angry. It is a vicious cycle that I need to get out of. I have tried the non-defensive posture of Carnegie, taken what I am told to God, and yet there are times when the criticism (“You are too close to the car in front of you”, “Don’t joke around like that with the other parents of our kids school”, “You really have a problem today, don’t you!”) builds up faster than i can shake it off. I think I am going to have to wear a rubber band and snap it when i want to respond in kind, or write down the response and swallow it, or some other trick to keep the anger in check.
5. Bless you.
Thanks for the comment! I’ve got a few responses from you:
1 – I in no way think that every wife is perfect or makes being married easy. There are some difficult women out there. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t have the proverbs about leaky faucets and such.
2 – For the singles … “You are so lucky that you are not married” is wrong. First, we each need to be content right where God has us. If that’s married … GREAT! If that’s single … GREAT! You are blessed if you are happy where God has you.
3 – Equality in marriage is where problems begin. I do not expect my wife to give as much to this marriage as me. As a matter of fact … I try hard (and usually fail) to give more to our marriage than she gives. It’s an out-giving kind of game. My focus is not on what she gives or does … but on what I can do to make her happier each and every day.
Hope all that makes sense!
Go with God,
Donald B