How to Respect Your Husband When You Really Don’t Trust Him
Dear Shaunti,
I recently read For Women Only and I now realize how important it is for my husband to know I respect him – which I do. But I come from a long line of “strong women” (as my dad puts it) and none of us is afraid to voice an opinion. Including telling our husbands how to do things, like what to do with the kids while we’re out for a few hours, or the most efficient route to soccer practice that avoids the traffic bottlenecks. It’s not that I don’t trust him, I’m just very particular, I guess. But it makes him upset. How do I convey respect to him when I just know he’s in over his head and needs help?
-WIT (Wife-In-Training)
Dear WIT, I’m trying hard to read your last sentence with a straight face. Did you really just say “how do I convey respect” and “he’s in over his head and needs help” in the same sentence?
Sister, you need a wake-up call. Let’s be really honest about the main problem here: you don’t trust him. If you did, you wouldn’t have to give him a minute-by-minute schedule of everything that needs to happen with the kids during the three hours that you are out with your sister. You’d be totally fine with the fact that he prefers taking the five extra minutes on the way to soccer, instead of appreciating the brilliance of your winding-back-road-and-hair-raising-left-turn-across-two-lanes-of-traffic route.
Instead, you want it your way … so you feel a need to tell him what to do. Which comes across as though you view him in the same way as you’d view a slightly in-over-his-head 14-year-old on his first babysitting job. (“So first, you have to make sure you microwave the soup about 90 seconds, because 2 minutes will make it too hot…”)
I mean, seriously: how must your approach look to him? After all, there are other day-to-day things you probably trust him with completely, right? You trust that he’s not going to take Fido to work in the middle of the summer, and leave him locked in the car all day with the windows rolled up. You don’t need to tell him that, because you know he’s not an idiot.
So realize that each time you tell him what to do in these other similar day-to-day things of life, that it automatically means that you think he needs the help, the poor dear. In other words: in your mind, he is an idiot. And that feeling is terrible for anyone – but especially guys, since their greatest emotional need is to feel able and respected for what they do.
Yes, absolutely, there are always things that any of us might need help on. The first time my husband showed me how to use the snowblower, it took some getting used to. The first time I showed him how to use a complicated inhaler contraption for our toddler daughter, he needed to try it a few times. All the men I interviewed for my book For Women Only told me that they realize there are times help is needed. The key is to ask him, “Do you want any help, or are you good?” And if he says he’s fine, let him give it a shot… without standing there anxiously, which means (in his mind) you’re just waiting for him to fail.
If you can reach out to your husband and find a way to be a true, respectful partner and not an I-want-it-my-way-criticizer, I promise you it will build your relationship. Because instead of giving up because he feels like he can’t win, he will feel confident that he can step out and become the man you want him to be.
Helping people thrive in life and relationships is Shaunti Feldhahn’s driving passion, supported by her research projects and writing. After starting out with a Harvard graduate degree and experience on Wall Street, her life took an unexpected shift into relationship research. She now is a popular speaker around the world and the author of best-selling books about men, women, and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).
Her newest book, The Kindness Challenge, demonstrates that kindness is the answer to almost every life problem, and is sparking a much-needed movement of kindness across the country. Visit www.shaunti.com for more.
Whenever a husband/father says their wife/daughter is a “strong woman”, I’d say most of the time they mean:
“She’s a bossy, my-way-or-the-highway, authoritarian perfectionist who whacks out if she doesn’t get her way. But I can’t say that because I’ll get punished/beat-up/yelled-at/sexually rejected, so instead I’ll just say ‘strong woman’, and when nobody can see, I’ll roll my eyes”.
Laughing man (idiot) here.
Married. 32 years of “holy deadlock”. HA!
Reminds me of when we took our young-uns home. I had been a Navy Corpsman. (medic to all you landlubbers out there) I had worked NICU and Labor and Delivery. Had to deliver a baby once during a really busy night. NOT my expertise, training or job. Just mentioned to show I didn’t fold under pressure. Assisted in C-sections. Taken care or preemies. Worked a MEDEVAC of twin preemies once on the edges of a Hurricane that I had to breathe for each one with AMBU bags simultaneously. (Both made it, BTW)
To the point, our second child was a preemie and nursing staff wanted to make sure we were both OK to handle ourselves even though it was our second child.
NICU staff exclaimed “well, daddy knows what he is doing” and asked me if I wanted a job, but when wife came in she said I wasn’t doing anything right.
That pretty well sums up our whole “life” together in one short story. HA!
Is this situation covered in For Men Only? HA!
Wow, Longsuffering. From a woman’s perspective, I’d say she just had that maternal instinct kick in where she was just scared, but that sounds really painful. My world just kind of collapsed a few weeks ago when my husband confessed he has never given up his porn habit as I thought he had for the last 6 years. We’ve been married for 10.5 years. He seems truly broken and repentant, unlike before, but it it still hurts. He doesn’t blame me, and says that he was not a frequent user of porn, but it was usually my disrespect that triggered him to turn to that. It helps me to see men’s perspective on how their wives make them feel. She probably sees you as this tough guy who doesn’t have a lot of feelings. He and I both grew up in female dominated homes and the pattern was being repeated. I hated him throwing all the decision making on me, but I guess I never made him feel like he was capable of taking the lead. Now we are both broken, and at the brink of divorce, but seeing what God will do and for the sake of our 3 kids. He says he still thinks I’m a basically a knock-out so I guess that’s something? Ha!