At the beginning of our marriage I can recall several conversations that went like this:
I: [exasperated] “Honey, tell me what you want me to do, when and how, and I’ll do it.” Make it simpler. 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 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 individuals and couples now, there is a broad trend to suggest that when marriages are in trouble (and all marriages have troubled times), a high proportion of the time men just want to know what to do, how and when. to do it. Having marital interactions reduced to some kind of formula.
Frustrated, we resorted to the simplest and most direct way to solve the problem. We are even willing to submit to doing what we would rather not do to keep our wives happy. And many times, we are confused why this frustrates our wives. Don’t you see our sacrifice? Yes, they see the sacrifice and they see through it.
While on the surface it sounds noble to be prepared to do whatever we have to do, I’m sure most women (and some men) reading this will spot the flaw in this approach.
Failure to motivate. When someone says, ‘just tell me what to do,’ they are essentially saying, ‘I’m checking; you lost me. ‘We may think that this is what our wives want to hear, but it is exactly what they don’t want to hear, as it highlights that our love comes down to ticking 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 understand themselves.
Most of marriage is about two adults behaving like adults. Every time a couple says, ‘Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it,’ we can tell that something is wrong with their commitment to intimacy within the marriage. As spouses, we want our spouse to want to do this or that, and certainly to be creative in the way they love us.
None of us want love so cheap that it is made just because we need it.
We want it to come out of our partner’s heart, because they wanted to do it, 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 is in fact not love at all. It is a false love.
It is a behavior that looks like love but does not feel like love.