Kiss Me Like You Mean It (15 page)

I could have said these things, but I didn’t. At least, not right then. The therapy hour was up, and it wouldn’t have done any good, anyway. This wife was not ready to admit that her marriage was lousy and that she was hanging on to some heavy-duty resentments against her husband and deep feelings of loss in the marriage. I went to Plan B and scheduled individual therapy sessions for the next week. Sometimes, I can get through to a spouse when I see him or her alone.

“She’ll Get Over It, Doc”

I had forty-five minutes to convince this husband that his marriage was in serious trouble and changes were necessary. As he sat down, I said, “I want you to listen to me for the next fifteen minutes. Listen closely. You have a serious problem on your hands. I’m taking off the kid gloves, and I’m going to give it to you straight.” Here’s a brief summary of the points I hammered home:

“This is your second session at a Christian psychologist’s office. Your wife asked you to come to therapy. There’s no way she’d do that unless she was really hurting and because of this, very concerned about your marriage.

“You’re an emotional stick. Like a lot of husbands, you keep all your deep feelings and thoughts locked away inside. You don’t talk on a personal, self-disclosing level with your wife. You don’t talk to her about what’s really going on in your life, your career, your spiritual walk with God, your relationship with her, and your hopes and dreams and fears and vulnerabilities.

“From the history I took of your childhood in our first session, I know why you’re a stick. Your dad’s a stick. He taught you to clam up and stuff everything personal way down deep. Your mom put up with it, so you expect your wife to put up with it.

“You’re not obeying God’s instructions to husbands. You’re not loving her the Ephesians 5:25 way, which is loving her in the same way Christ loved the church. You’re not loving her in the 1 Peter 3:7 way, which is treating her gently, and tenderly meeting her needs. You’re not loving her the Song of Solomon way, which is loving her with great passion and romance. You’re not loving her the Ephesians 5:23–24 and John 13:3–5 ways, which is by serving her. You’re loving her
your
way, not God’s way.

“I know from our first session that your sex life as a couple isn’t full of passion and excitement and intimacy. In fact, from your wife’s perspective, it’s boring and routine. I’m telling you here and now, that’s
your
fault. Your wife cannot respond sexually unless she is emotionally connected to you. Your sex life is pretty poor, isn’t it? How would it be for you if there were no sex at all? That’s in your future if you don’t change and become a better husband.

“Your wife’s
number one need
in your marriage is to feel close to you. She wants and needs to experience life
together
, not as two separate persons. To have the Genesis 2:24 ‘one flesh’ relationship God desires for every married couple, you must learn to open up and share personally with her on a regular basis. As long as you are a stick, you won’t meet this critical need in her life.

“Over the years, you’ve hurt your wife again and again by being a stick. I know you haven’t meant to, but you have. Every time you clammed up and chose not to share personally, you hurt her. Every time you avoided talking through a conflict, you hurt her. Every time you failed to romance her, you hurt her. And all those hurts are still there, inside of her. They’ve turned into resentments and are eating away at her love for you. If she doesn’t express them soon, she’ll hit the wall and have no feelings for you at all.”

After firing all these verbal bullets, I sat back and waited for his angry, defensive, and rationalization-filled response. I wasn’t disappointed. He said that the terrible picture I painted of his marriage wasn’t even close to the truth.

He said, “Look, things aren’t that serious. I know I can be a better husband, but I’m doing a good job. Nobody’s perfect. She’s a little upset now, but it’ll pass. I know my woman. She’ll get over it, Doc. She always does.”

And then he added the real kicker, the statement that revealed why he thought his marriage was fine: “Doc, you’re saying we’re in serious trouble, but
she’s
not saying that. You heard her in that first session. She’s not angry. She’s not letting me have it. She may want some improvements, but she’s not telling me she resents me.”

I replied, “I know she’s not letting you have it. But, believe me, she has big time resentments against you. She’s stuffing them and faking it with you. Like most wives, she finds it very difficult to express anger, deep hurt, and resentments with you. One day, she’ll be through with faking, and she’ll turn completely away from you. Her resentments will drive her to give up on you and move on rather than just live within the cold, emotionless, romanceless cell you put her in. You have a small window of opportunity to act and stop her from writing you off. So, you’d better get to work.”

I urged him to quickly do three things: One, call his mother and have a heart to heart talk about what it was really like living with his dad, the original stick. Two, work to change as a husband, and love his wife the way
she
needs to be loved. Three, encourage—push, if necessary—his wife to express directly to him all her resentments.

He refused all three action steps. He just couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. He told me, “I know you mean well, Doc, but all this psychobabble isn’t for us. When you see her in her session tomorrow, I’m sure you’ll realize that she’s not all that upset.”

Good Wives Don’t Get Angry, Do They?

Well, so far I was zero for one. Now I had forty-five minutes to convince this wife that it was essential that she get in touch with her resentments and express them directly to her husband. I knew something she didn’t know: her marriage was at stake. I went after her with these arguments:

“You are filled with anger and hurt at your husband. All of his insensitive behaviors have led to a big pool of resentments inside. Don’t tell me he’s a good husband. He’s a lousy husband! Don’t tell me you’ve forgiven him for not meeting your most important needs. You haven’t! To forgive, you must first express the pain directly to the one who caused it.

“If you don’t get your resentments out, even if he genuinely changed as a husband, it wouldn’t make any difference to you. It wouldn’t be enough because the resentments would outweigh his improvements. Every mistake he made would energize the resentment pool.

“But I wouldn’t worry about him changing. If you won’t be honest and tell him your resentments, he won’t realize how serious things are, how bad you really feel. He’ll keep thinking what he’s thinking now—that your marriage is fine and dandy. So, he won’t change. He has no reason to do anything differently! And, that’s your fault.

“Your unexpressed resentments will limit your ability to be a good wife. You’ll be irritable and impatient with him; you won’t be supportive and encouraging; you won’t be a responsive sex partner; you’ll overreact and be nastier in conflicts; and you won’t meet his needs.

“Worst of all, it’s very likely your resentments will kill your feelings of respect and love for him. The day will come when you are completely numb toward him. You won’t care about him, and you’ll want out of the marriage. Don’t look so shocked. It’s already happening to you. You haven’t hit the wall yet, but you’re awfully close. You’re playing the part of a good, Christian woman. But it’s a façade! You’re hiding your feelings and not stating them.”

She admitted that she did have “some anger, hurt, and resentment” because of her needs not being met by her husband. “But,” she said, “it isn’t that much and I don’t want to express these feelings to him.” Here are her four reasons for this and my responses:

Wife: “Expressing anger and resentments just isn’t Christian.”

Me: “No, it
is
Christian. The Bible teaches us to ‘speak the truth in love’ (Eph. 4:15), to ‘be angry, and yet do not sin’ (Eph. 4:26), not to lie (Eph. 4:25), and to deal directly with anyone with whom we have an unresolved issue (Matt. 5:23–24).”

Wife: “But telling him how I really feel wouldn’t be acting in a respectful way.”

Me: “Quite the opposite. A big part of being respectful is being honest with your husband. Your job is to be honest with him. How can he be a good husband if he doesn’t know what you need? Plus, your buried resentments will build up over time.”

Wife: “I’m scared of my anger. If you’re right, and my anger is pretty intense, I don’t know if I can handle expressing it. I don’t like being angry or showing anger. I was raised not to be angry, because it leads to damaged relationships.”

Me: “Okay, now we’re getting to the real reasons. It will be difficult and scary to express your internalized anger. But you can do it, and you will not drop dead or turn into a crazy woman. You’ll clean out the anger inside, and you will feel much better. You need to be much
more
scared of the anger you
don’t
express. It will do tremendous damage to you, your husband, and your marriage.”

Wife: “If I dump on my husband all this anger and resentment you say I have, he’ll be hurt. He’ll probably get angry back at me. He’ll be offended and pull further away from me.”

Me: “He will be hurt, angry, and offended. I sure hope he is. Husbands only change when you scare them, rattle their cages, rock their worlds, and get their attention.

He’s like all the sticks I’ve seen. He wants your marriage to stay the way it is now and will change only if he has to.

When he feels your genuine hurt and anger and knows you will not continue to accept the way things are, then he’ll change. He doesn’t see any need to change. Because you have not been honest with him, he does not know you are suffering. If you vent your resentments and longings, he’ll see how serious things are and be motivated to make changes. He’ll finally get it.”

I urged her to write a letter to her husband. A letter with all her resentments and unfulfilled dreams in living color. No holding back.
The truth
.
In love
. I asked her to write as much as she needed. If she wrote forty pages, so be it. I told her I’d ask her to read it at our next marital session.

I could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t going to do it. She said her pastor and a well-known Christian author she was reading had recommended a different approach: to forget the past, pray, and quickly forgive her husband. Then, she was advised to focus on loving her husband unconditionally. She was told that eventually he’d come around and be the husband she’d always dreamed he’d be. She thanked me for my time and said she wouldn’t need any more of my services.

I felt like saying, “This approach you’re going to try is the same approach you’ve been trying for years. How is it going?” But I wished her well and said to call me if she changed her mind.

I Hate It When I’m Right

Ten months later, this same couple was sitting in front of me. But, oh, what a difference! The husband had called to make the appointment. He was sitting on the edge of my couch, nervous and sweating. The wife looked like a totally different woman. She was as cold as an Arctic blast. Her face was expressionless. She showed no emotion except for irritation that she was in my office. I thought to myself, “She’s hit the wall.”

She opened her mouth and said exactly what I thought she’d say. She wanted out of the marriage. She had finally gotten sick and tired of living with this man. She had no feelings for him at all. She just didn’t care about him, period. She’d only come today to try and get it through his thick skull that it was over between them. She had gotten an apartment. She had gotten her own checking account. She had gotten an attorney. He’d be getting the divorce papers shortly. All she wanted from him was a friendly divorce.

Her husband was devastated, a shell of his former, confident self. He finally “got it,” but it was too late. He told me through his tears, “Doc, you were right. I wish I had listened.” I saw him in about ten individual sessions, and he did a lot of good work. He changed, as a man and as a husband.

But she could have cared less. Her resentments were still all inside, and they drove her away from him. She never came back to therapy after that session. She never wavered. She divorced him.

14

The Little Dog, Conflict, and Me

Some time ago, I decided I needed a new exercise program. I had been using an exercise bicycle for years, and frankly, it was boring me silly. Pedaling and staring at the wall had gotten very old.

When I crabbed to Sandy, she said, “Why don’t you walk in the neighborhood? All the experts say walking is the best exercise.” I knew immediately that her idea was a winner. I took her in my arms, gave her several lingering kisses, and said, “Brilliant, Sweetie Carkst! I married a genius!”

Walking turned out to be an ideal aerobic activity for me. Ah, the great outdoors! The fresh, cool air. The quiet. The dew on the grass. The sun coming up on a brand new day. The chance to think and pray as I strolled briskly around my peaceful neighborhood.

Monday through Friday, I left my house at sunrise and walked for thirty minutes. Other than a few other early morning walkers, I was alone. It was the perfect way to start the day.