Have a New Husband by Friday (18 page)

So, what’s in it for you? If, in order to make ends meet for your family, your husband needs to paint houses on the weekend besides doing his regular job during the week, he’ll do it. If he needs to pick up your daughter from preschool in the afternoon, because you’re so exhausted due to your deadlines and need to take a nap, he’ll arrange to leave work early and pick her up. Why? Because you’ve made him the most important priority in your life, so he’ll return the favor.

How to Make Love to Your Man

1. Affirm his hard work in providing for your family.

2. Ask for his help and promise him a reward.

3. Be positive even in tough times.

4. Learn to think differently. Marriage isn’t about what he’s supposed to do or what you’re supposed to do; it’s a relationship.

5. Get behind his eyes to see how he views the world and what’s important to him.

6. Surprise him and take him someplace
he’d
like to go.

The Power of Your Words

I’m convinced the words that you, as a wife, use with your man are so important that they can bring him to a climax of sexual satisfaction. Don’t take my word for it, though. Ask your husband, then try it out. “Does it mean a lot to you when I tell you how much I love you, want you, and need you? Or do you get tired of it?”

You know what he’ll say? “When you say you need me, I tell myself I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

If your guy is sexually satisfied with you, why would he ever violate his marital vows with some woman from the office or some hooker? Why would he, if he has a lover and a best friend at home who loves him, responds to him, listens to him, and respects him? There’s no need to shack up with someone else.

Men will always notice other beautiful women. But the power of your words and your mutual satisfaction in sex is the emotional hook you put into your man that keeps him off-limits and off the market for any other woman.

Your job in marriage is to make your husband feel special. Women thrive on loving words; loving words for men mean sex. A man feels closest to his mate when he’s physically intimate. It’s the one time he tunes everything else out and reaps the benefit of physical closeness with you. I’m convinced that in the heat of passion, your words alone could bring a man to climax. They’re the little rudder that turns the big ship in the direction you want it to go.

I know how busy you are with keeping up a home, perhaps working full-time or part-time, and taking care of the kids. I know sometimes you just don’t feel like it. You have cycles to deal with, and stressful relatives. But keeping your man fulfilled doesn’t take much. There are times in life when a quickie before dinner does not mean a drink. (See my books
Turn Up the Heat
and
Sheet Music
for lots of wonderful ideas.) Again, you’re an intelligent woman. You’re seeing the benefits of this. A little bit of your time—even when things are stressful for you—will gain you a husband who wants to please you, who risks sharing with you his thoughts and feelings, and who will do anything to help you. Don’t you want that kind of sweet, wonderful man in your home?

Women Talk

After I heard you speak about what a man needs to feel loved, I felt really guilty. I’ve treated my husband more like a grown son than a husband and a lover. I’ve always told him what to do and expected him to do it. I never really asked him if he wanted to do any of those things. I didn’t tell him I appreciated him for providing for our family. We’ve had a lot of struggles as a result. It’s my fault. No wonder my husband didn’t try any longer to help me but just sat watching TV and tuning me out.

The breakthrough in our marriage didn’t come until I apologized to him for treating him the way I have for the past nine years. He was so surprised, and a little wary. I think he thought I couldn’t change. But I have—at least, I’m trying.

The other night his favorite TV show,
CSI,
was on, but when I whispered in his ear that I might have other ideas, you know what? He flipped off the TV and followed me with a grin. That’s gotta be a first. I’m planning more rendezvous, but don’t tell my husband—I want it to be a surprise!

Sandra, Kentucky

Surprise Him

I love the story one wife told me about how she surprised her husband. It was a Friday night, their anniversary, and she invented a reason to take her husband’s car for the day. She dropped him off at work and told him she’d pick him up. He had made plans to take her to a nice restaurant for dinner.

After work, he came out of the office building and got in their SUV, then leaned over to give her a kiss hello. Slowly she unbuttoned her trench coat. She had nothing on underneath. “Do you really want to go to dinner right now,” she asked, “or would you like to use the hotel room I reserved for us down the street?”

That woman and her husband still think of that time often—12 years later. It’s only one of the many memories they’ve built by being creative in the way they approach their sex life.

Another wife told me that her husband
hated
shopping. It was on the top of his “don’t wanna, ain’t gonna” list. She needed a new washer and dryer, though, and some other items that she didn’t feel comfortable looking for by herself. So her husband had dutifully gone with her to shop. It had taken all afternoon, and he’d about had enough. But she had to go to one more store. She knew her husband would groan if she even suggested going into Target, so she got creative.

“Honey,” she said in a conspiratorial tone, “come closer. I want to tell you something.”

“What?”

“No, you have to come close. No one else can hear this.”

Her hubby leaned in really close. She then touched him, put her mouth right next to his ear so that it almost felt
like a kiss, then seductively whispered, "If you go to just one more store with me, I'll do this as soon as we get home." And she mentioned one of his favorite things to do in bed.

Sex can open a man’s ears like nothing else.

You think that man had a smile on his face and happily went to the next store? You bet. Ever after, that favorite thing to do in bed became known to them as the Target Special. They've never told anyone what the Target Special is (they didn't tell me either), but whenever this wife wants her husband to do her a special favor, she knows exactly what to say.

Sex can open a man’s ears like nothing else.

Romancing the Stone

“Dr. Leman,” you might be saying, “I’ve heard everything you’ve said in this chapter about men wanting sex, but you’re way off track with my husband. He isn’t even faintly interested in having sex with me. I don’t think his DieHard has worked in years. I have to beg for it, and I’m dying here. Any help for me? Why does it always have to be the
guy
who has to initiate sex? Don’t I get some say in the matter here?”

Welcome to the 15 percent club. Fifteen percent of women have a natural inclination to pursue sex. You need sex to feel fulfilled more often than your husband does (or more often than he wants to give it—more on that in a moment). In 85 percent of couples, it is the husband who is the sexual pursuer. But in 15 percent of couples, the woman is the pursuer. If your husband is the great excuse maker when you approach him for sex (“Not now”; “I’m too tired”; “I don’t feel well”), consider these reasons.

He Sees Sex as Dirty

Maybe your husband grew up in a very puritanical home, with many rules and the view that sex as an act is bad, nasty, and dirty. If so, it’s understandable that those views carried over to his relationship with you. Every time he has sex with you, he hears his dad saying, “Cover yourself up. You’re not allowed to walk around this house naked.” In these types of homes, there is also little hugging or encouragement. Your husband needs to reorient his view toward sex, but he needs your help.

If he grew up in a Victorian type of home, where sex was never discussed and was put in a bad light, counseling for both of you would help as you work on your sexual satisfaction.

He’s Been Abused Sexually

Sexual abuse is unconscionable. When it happens within the bonds of family, the betrayal and hurt and guilt run even deeper. And for a boy, who is never supposed to cry when it hurts and is supposed to “act like a man,” sexual abuse is emasculating. It can lead to intense questions about who that man is, and if he’s even a man.
What did I do to make that man [or woman] do that to me as a kid?
Sexual abuse survivors often feel ashamed and dirty. The very act of sex triggers horrible memories and images of perverted sex. If this is the case, you and your husband need to seek professional help together.

It will take time and the guidance of a counselor to better understand the issues.

He’s a Homosexual Hiding Out in Marriage

This happens more often than you might think. A guy who has homosexual tendencies marries, thinking marriage will cure him. But he has no interest in sex with you, a woman, and images of homosexuality continue to flood his brain. There is no easy way out of this one. If your husband doesn’t desire you, you can’t make him desire you. No fancy negligees will arouse him.

If your husband admits to having a homosexual relationship or having had one in the past, that’s a whole other story. You need to completely remove yourself physically from him. You need to protect yourself. There is no way to create desire where there is none. Your marriage does not have a high chance of success.

He Has a Physical Problem

If you come up on your husband from behind and begin to stroke him in the right spots, but his engines don’t begin to rev into full gear within a minute, your husband may need new batteries for his DieHard. There may be a physical problem that you need to get checked out by your physician.

He Feels Threatened by You and Is Learning to Control You

Remember earlier when we talked about controllers? They make you approach them in a very special way. That man of yours has learned to control you by withholding something you want—sex. He’s holding it over your head. Usually this control is not just in the sexual arena; it’s in all areas of life. Remember, this can be in a very domineering way or in a subtle way. But both ways are still control. So what can you do if you’re living in this type of a situation?

1. Stop buying all those fancy negligees. They won’t do a thing. Don’t torture yourself thinking,
There’s something wrong with me because my husband doesn’t find me desirable and doesn’t want to make love to me. I’ll lose weight, I’ll get a slinky new gown . . .
Stop the guilt trip. No matter how much weight you lose, how much you tone up, how “hot” you look, it won’t work. Instead, simply stop asking him for sex. Stop approaching him altogether.

2. Talk to your husband about each of the five areas I’ve just discussed. Tell him that if any of them resonate with him and he wants to talk to someone, you’d be more than happy to be a part of that. Or if he wants to do it alone, that’s fine too. Convey that doing something about these areas is extremely important to you and the health and longevity of your marriage.

3. Hit that tennis ball back into his court. Expect that he will follow up. If he doesn’t, pursue it more aggressively. Tell your husband, “I need you to pursue what we talked about. Our relationship can’t continue the way it is without dire consequences to both of us. It’s that serious.”

How Do You Show Love?

I always fear the big events in my life. Like my twenty-fifth anniversary, my fiftieth birthday. Those are the markers in life when I expect a more-than-ordinary present from my lovely wife. But here’s the kicker: she tends to buy something for me that
she
really wants, and it usually costs a lot of money.

For our anniversary one year, she bought me a jukebox. Now, I love jukeboxes. At the time, I owned four of them. All of them held 45s of music I grew up with—all early rock-and-roll stars. They’re the old kind that kids used to kick if the nickel didn’t drop through properly. I can regularly hear Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis (“Thank you very much”), and Little Anthony and the Imperials. It’s a wonderful reminiscence of my childhood.

But what did Sande buy me? A CD jukebox. I thought,
What
am I going to do with this thing? It was the thought that counted, but I was stumped. (Fast forward a few years, though, and I learned to love it.)

You know what is the greatest of all gifts Sande ever gave me? A copy of my very first book cover, framed in a lovely wood frame, that said “#1 husband, #1 father, #1 author, I love you.” It was a simple gift that probably cost less than $25. But it tickled my fancy. It scratched where I itched. It told me how much she valued me in her life.

The 5 Languages of Love

Which is your husband’s? Which is yours?

Words of affirmation Quality time Gifts Acts of service Physical touch

The Language of Love

There’s an old story about a small church that needed a new chandelier for the entryway of their building. The church constitution said that 100 percent of the congregation had to be in agreement for any major expenditure, and the chandelier was going to cost over $2,000. So they took a vote. It was 99 to 1. They retook the vote. It was still 99 to 1. So they had a congregational meeting. The chairman of the board got up and said, “There is just one holdup. We want to respect the secret ballot in the church, but if that one person is here and would like to meet with me in private about their concerns, I’d be more than happy to do that.”

An old farmer in overalls stood up in the back of the church. “I’m the one who voted against it.”

“What’s your problem with the chandelier?” the chairman asked. “Would you care to share that with us?”

“Well,” the farmer said, taking off his hat to scratch his head, “I don’t know about any
chandelier
, but what we really need around here is a light in the entryway of the church.”

That farmer didn’t know what a chandelier was. The farmer and the chairman were talking completely different languages, but both were trying to accomplish the same purpose. Funny story, but true.