It was a hard lesson to learn as a young man, but once my wife’s spirit was wounded, all the words and logic in the world would fail in making things better in the immediate. Only time, action, and a genuine change in my attitude would prove to help.
It seems that one of the most important lessons I teach men is that there is often a price to pay for losing their cool, being loose with their words, being overly sensitive, or acting in an uncaring way. However, few seem to be willing to accept this fact in a patient manner. Instead, they pout, accuse, point fingers, and whine as if they are expecting age-old principles and marital norms to take a back seat to their specific situation.
Generally Speaking
Though there is no cookie cutter typecast for every single human being, generally speaking, women feel deeper than men. Consequently, it is this part of my wife that I have had to learn to protect. That is, I have had to learn that if I offend her emotionally, my logic and words will fail at pulling her out of what I call an emotional bomb shelter, especially in the moment.
Of course, none of this means that a woman is not responsible for her behavior. I deal with this in my marriage book, especially in chapter 9. However, it does mean that there are natural repercussions to a man’s negativity that must be accepted in a patient manner. If a man fails to relate the effect with the cause, he will find himself continually frustrated in his marriage, and he will come across like a big baby.
The Exception to This Rule
There are a number of verbal women that are married to those quiet or more passive types. As stated in our marriage book in chapter 4, these men will find that their wives actually appreciate conversation in the moment. However, I find that most men will fail if they think their words are an end-all cure-all in the moment. Most wives want action mixed with genuine change over a long period of time.
How this Plays Out
Success is failure turned inside out. That is, those that succeed are not those that have never failed. They are those that learn from their mishaps.
Proverbs 1:5 teaches:
“A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:”
Proverbs 9:9 says:
“Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.”
What I love about these verses is that they teach us that wise men are still learning. These verses do not say that a wise man knows everything as much as that he has a teachable spirit.
Early in marriage, I started to see that once I offended my wife, she was going to retreat into a place of safety for a few hours or even days. Once again, I am not prescribing this behavior, only describing it. However, the facts were the facts. Once I acted out like a little kid, I would struggle because I then felt an emotional distance between my wife and I. Simply put, I did not like the effect that my negative behavior had caused.
Embrace the Consequence
It took me a few years into marriage to start allowing these negative situations to be one of my teachers. That is, instead of continually becoming upset that I felt disconnected from my wife after an altercation, I started to take on a different approach and learn from my mistakes.
I cannot over-emphasize the value of this principle. Honestly, it greatly propelled me to success as before I would wallow in pity over feeling disconnected with Melody. However, once I learned to start embracing the opportunity to learn from my mistakes, I stopped groveling in self-pity and determined to avoid the negative behavior that was causing scenarios as such.
Proverbs 20:30 states:
“The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil: so do stripes the inward parts of the belly.”
Simply put, when you touch a hot stove, you should quickly learn not to ever do that again. In the same way, I found it better to embrace the negative consequences of my behavior by learning from them. I found this a much better approach than to whine, complain, or hurl accusations once I offended my wife.
These principles are covered in detail in chapter four of our marriage book, How to Fight for Your Marriage Without Fighting With One Another.
– Dr. Force
Proverbs 18:14 – “The spirit of a man can endure his sickness, but as for a broken spirit, who can endure it?”
Infidelity. Physical abuse. Those are a little more clear cut cases when trying to understand broken spirits in a spouse. What’s harder to understand is that a broken spirit can happen from issues that aren’t that “big”.
When you’ve retreated into your shelter time after time because an innocent comment triggered an explosion, or because you laughed too loud or joked too much in public so that you embarrassed him or her, then eventually you become someone you’re not. You put on a ‘persona’ to please that person, in order to not trigger the explosion that you can never predict. You try to be perfect…but nobody can be.
Proverbs 22:24 – “Do not associate with a man given to anger, or go with a hot-tempered man.” Maybe if the anger had been evident before the marriage, you could have avoided it. But it didn’t rear its ugly head until a few weeks later…even though the courtship was over a year long! And you’ve been battling it ever since. Honoring them over yourself. Adapting to meet their needs. Acting unselfishly to avoid provoking.
And one day, you realize that you aren’t willing to retreat from that shelter ever again. You used to be desperate to get out of it each time and regain the closeness…but now you don’t care. You’ve tried so many times, and failed every time…but always for a different reason, because you’ve changed all the other things that caused the previous explosions. You begin to realize that you will never be “perfect enough”.
Couple that with the fact that the spouse is a genuinely good person except for the anger which permeates any situation at unpredictable times, and it’s ten times harder to understand, in yourself, why you just can’t stand the thought of leaving that shelter again. You might love the person, and have performed and continue to perform in loving ways in duty to your marriage vows (and not just sexually, either)…but you’re no longer “in love”.
You don’t start conversations, because you never know which topic will trigger a discussion about which the anger will flare at you…when the subject is completely unrelated to you and out of your control…when you were just trying to have a conversation. You don’t include the person in the details of your day, because you never know which detail will trigger the explosion when the other feels that you did something “wrong” (i.e. differently than they would have). You don’t ask for help with anything, because you never know which time you’ll get yelled at for being a “slave-driver” (though anyone else can ask for anything and they will get the help they need). This might only happen one out of every ten times….but when it does happen it is completely unwarranted and unpredictable and so explosive, and the words said to you are so damaging, that you feel your heart just can’t handle any more shrapnel being embedded in it.
So you stay in your bomb shelter. You are comfortable there. But you are so sad. And the spouse knows you are sad, and the spouse seems to be trying so hard. You feel bad for the spouse. You know the distance hurts them, but the hurt to yourself has been so extensive that you just can’t do it again. Proverbs 19:19 – “A man of great anger will bear the penalty, for if you rescue him, you will only have to do it again.”
You just don’t dare leave the shelter, because you’re afraid that after you do, it won’t be long until you say something you thought was harmless, or offer an opinion that you thought was actually being sought, and you find out that you lit the fuse once again without ever meaning to. You’ve had 29 years of the unpredictable explosions, and you know that, if you leave the bomb shelter, the next explosion will kill you emotionally to the point that you will walk away and never look back.
So you stay in the shelter, as a last-ditch effort to ensure that you will never again be the reason that this person explodes for no reason. They might explode, but it won’t be because of you. 90% of the time, things were good. But that 10% of the time, when the inexplicable anger exploded and you know that it was undeserved (and sometimes it was public…there were witnesses and you were humiliated)…it was so severe and damaging emotionally that you have arrived at the point where, in spite of the sadness, the bomb shelter is the only place you feel you can breathe.
So you stay there…and this time, you don’t plan to leave the bomb shelter. It feels rather like mourning. When you lose a loved one to death, there is a time of adjustment, and then a sadness as you adapt to the “new normal” of life without that person. But in this scenario, you are mourning what “was”, and what you are unwilling to try to get back because it’s too painful. Imagine bringing a loved one back to life, just to watch them die over and over and over every six months or so. That’s what you imagine this feels like…so you realize one day that, though it will be more painful at first, in the long run it will be easier to leave it dead. Because it’s the only way you can keep yourself alive.
That is exactly the way I am feeling in my marriage. You described every detail of the emotional changes and
I felt the same way, beaten down emotionally, stupid, ugly, useless… the list goes on and on.
I remember sitting up one night thinking “ God help me, this can’t be MY life for the rest of my life”.
I left everything I’d invested 12 years into and started over… I’ve not for one moment regretted my choice.
It was scary and I felt ashamed that my marriage had failed, but I was more ashamed that I had given someone else absolute control of my life for so long.
It has taken some time, but I can honestly say that have regained “my old self” again. Never again will I let someone make me feel unworthy to be a part of this world!
Love yourselves ladies! You are beautiful!❤️
Why do we the brunt of other people’s issues that not love
wow…..you described my life with this man!
Oh my word- this is me. This is exactly me. Felt like I was the only one living this way.
Wow! Also Anonymous, July 19 — your experience is almost identical to how I feel… silence, the bomb shelter, while lonely and sad is way safer. You just get too tired of the same battles. Thank you for giving it words.
You described my marriage exactly!
I tried many times to tell my husband that his repeated refusal to listen to or care about my hurt would eventually lead to a wall being put up. One day, it happened and what was interesting is that I didn’t purposely put up a wall. It just happened. I realized that the only way to stay in my marriage was for a part of me to die (and I’m not talking in a Christ-like way). I wouldn’t be me. During this time, God tore to pieces a lot of my long-held beliefs about divorce, submission, etc. He told me very specific things and led me out of my marriage. I sought counseling through all of this and hoped and prayed my husband would go but he went two times and told me in no uncertain terms he wasn’t going back. Not much you can do when someone refuses to do their part. Two years out of it and I am joyful and have seen the hand of God in my life providing for me over and over and opening doors through this process (even when I would ask God to slam them shut if I was hearing Him wrongly).
It’s the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced but the fruit already on the other side has been great.
The main thing is….I’m free to be me. It is wonderful.
Many stories of “covert” abuse go untold. Sadly, there are husbands that suffer at the hands of their wives, too. In these situations, there are wives that are disrespectful to their husbands: spending more time & energy with family & friends than their husbands, comparing their husbands to other men, flirting with other men, affirming other men more than they affirm their husbands, withholding affection & intimacy from their husbands, etc etc. All of this is emasculating and hurtful, and as the husband speaks out against such behavior, he is labeled abusive. Husbands have spirits, too, that can also be broken.
Of course, but that is not what the article is about clearly. The article is about how to support her emotionally after she has been hurt by her husband. Pointing the fingers is mentioned actually in the what not to do advice in the article. As long as men will refuse to see what they can do and just point the finger at women they will never figure it out.
Anonymous, you nailed it!!! Perfect response.
Amen. I can blame myself enough, work on what I need to work on as an individual-I don’t need she does this, she did that. She’s crazy…I need an accountable partner, lover, and friend who is willing to do the work too!
Agreed.
Amen to that