Biblical teaching on marriage is straightforward and clear: wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord (Ep 5:22); husbands love your wives, as Christ loves the Church. (25)
Seems simple enough, on the surface anyway, but as most anyone who’s been married for any length of time will confess, it ain’t so easy. Men and women are VERY different in how we communicate and how our minds and hearts work. This definitely complicates matters significantly, but it’s actually by design, and it’s a very good one. (Ge 2:18)
Though the biblical pattern always addresses the wife’s role first, this doesn’t imply her role is more important, or that the husband’s duty is secondary. We know from experience everything rises and falls on leadership; the home is no exception.
So, beyond the obvious … being kind, gentle, patient, humble, thoughtful, respectful, considerate, selfless (1Co 13:4-7), honest, hard-working and a man of my word, how do I actually love my wife in an effective and meaningful way? I’ve found I can be a veritable paragon of virtue and still fail miserably. In spite of all of the instruction I’ve had, and the tons of scripture I’ve memorized, I’ve evidently been missing something very basic that might make all the difference.
It’s embedded in the very word husband or husbandman, which actually refers to a farmer, one who cares for animals and crops for a living. (Ge 9:20, Ze 13:5, Jn 15:1, Ja 5:7) How do successful farmers actually do this?
They pay attention to their animals and crops, constantly monitoring their health and safety, with an informed knowledge of what they need, when they need it, and what makes them thrive. Farmers do this because plants and animals don’t advertise; they don’t cry out when they’re in trouble. The husbandman must carefully and diligently and proactively and systematically inspect everything under his care to preemptively discover issues and take care of them before they fester and get out of hand. (Pr 27:23) It is a full-time job: there are many variables … and many adversaries.
The simple farming metaphor suggests a marriage is much like a farm which must be tenderly and wisely cared for and nourished; but the reality is that a wife is obviously not so simple to take care of. Farmers struggle in their marriages just like the rest of us. (1Co 7:28)
The fact of the matter is that Woman is a bewilderingly complex creature, defying ultimate description. She’s more like an exotic, extravagant military grade radar/sonar device, extremely fine-tuned to pick up subtle cues, processing, filtering and distilling millions of signals from her universe.
She’s designed to do so, under the safe, loving, stable protection of her husband. When something moves her, and many things will, she may not immediately understand what it is, why it moves her, or what to do about it, any more than a radar can interpret all of the signals it receives on its own.
She needs to process what she’s thinking and feeling; she needs for her husband to explore, discover, ask, probe and listen with genuine interest and concern: she, in all of her beauty and complexity, is his to husband. This is primarily how he loves her.
And as with any farm, the husband can’t indiscriminately check out and neglect his duty any more than a farmer can take off for a season and expect everything to take care of itself, or military intelligence officials may disregard the constant flow of radar signals and keep their country safe. The husband must check in regularly with his wife and monitor her spiritual, emotional and physical state, listening, observing, studying, noticing and genuinely caring.
This seems to be what the Bible means when it calls husbands to dwell with their wives according to knowledge. (1Pe 3:7) This evidently isn’t merely a general knowledge of the wife’s history and general character, which is clearly important, but an active awareness of her present condition: a compassionate and intentional understanding of her current spiritual, emotional and physical state. This is an essential prerequisite to effectively leading and caring for our wives; it is intrinsic to cleaving to them (Ge 2:24), natural to being one flesh with them. We husbands cannot properly love our wives apart from this.
There is, as we should come to expect from Father’s brilliant design in Creation, an exquisite synergy within this intricate dynamic. The husband’s logical, methodical, compartmentalizing, problem-solving mindset often misses the big picture, oblivious to intangible threats and callous to the sensitivities of the young and vulnerable. The wife, synthesizing the familial and societal chaos around them within her emotional framework, is thus the husband’s eyes and ears in an unseen world, alerting him to imbalances and pathological trends he might never notice. When they harmonize together, they’re a formidable force in an unforgiving world, accomplishing what neither one of them ever could on their own. And this mysterious, powerful, mystical union is grounded in agape: selfless love.
There are many ways to express love in a marriage; we each have one or more love languages, ways we more easily receive and experience love (Quality Time, Acts of Service, Gifts, Words of Affirmation, (Non-sexual) Physical Touch, etc.), but if a husband does not care, if he’s not actively trying to understand his wife, consistently noting where she’s at, how she’s doing and what she’s feeling, asking her questions about herself and listening to her, engaging with her about herself, other expressions of his love will likely be diminished in their effectiveness. Obviously, this depends on the circumstances, the wife’s general frame and disposition, their history together, and many other variables, but active listening seems to be fundamental to it all.
Asking good, insightful questions is an art. Think about what you want to discover and frame the question to elicit dialogue rather than a Yes/No response. Listen carefully to the detail to detect hints of emotional content and build on that: “How did that make you feel?”, “Why do you think you reacted that way?” Build on the details she provides as an opportunity to engage further.
Don’t get defensive (that’s yielding to weakness and fear) when she points out your flaws and mistakes. If she’s even partly right, admit it and grow through it: this is the position of true strength and it’s gold for you in pursuing holiness. If she’s entirely off base, position this as an opportunity to obtain further insight into her wounds and misconceptions. Gently probe further to try to help her explore why she’s feeling that way. When you aren’t afraid and you stay calm you project and provide the strength and stability she needs. Be the rock that’s solid under her feet, unmoved by the waves of emotion crashing into it.
If your wife is a person of good will and character, remember that fact and give her the benefit of the doubt if/when you start to feel like she is attacking you. She probably isn’t, just processing her emotions and testing your strength.
I think it’s true that a wife cares a lot more about who she’s fighting with than what she’s fighting about. If she appears to be picking a fight, she may just be craving your attention and emotional engagement because she feels disconnected from you.
A woman feels loved when she feels understood.
This is a different kind of pursuit, not merely to win her love and her trust, but to understand her.
A word of advice to husbands: Resist the urge to default into “fix-it” mode when she is venting. If you try to fix a problem you don’t understand you’re wasting your time and will frustrate your wife. Give her time to verbally process what she is feeling until she understands what the problem is. Then try to fix it only if she asks for your help or input. Until then, keep your engagement to listening and empathizing and learning about her.