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If I ranked comments from wives to me, this one comes in close to the top: “My husband hurts my feelings.”
Countless divorcees have told us over the years that had they known the Love and Respect truth underlying the negative cycle they found themselves constantly on (which we refer to as the Crazy Cycle), they would never have divorced.
Husbands and wives are going to disagree . . . many times. They’re going to have arguments . . . many times. On top of that, husbands will disappoint wives, and wives will disappoint husbands, bringing reason for the offended or hurt spouse to broach a possibly sensitive or tough topic.
There is an axiom that I have used in my teachings for as long as I can remember that, to this day, I still fully believe in its simple but life-changing truth: “My response is my responsibility.”
When I was on staff at a church in the 1970s, we sought to serve widows and orphans. Though they were not all widows, we decided to lean into assisting single parents specifically.
People hear your words of truth, but they your words of kindness. They feel your love and respect. Is this why God commands a husband and wife to show love and respect in their marriage (Ephesians 5:33)? It is not enough to speak the truth Ephesians 4:15. If spoken unkindly, the truth can hammer a person in a cruel way that leaves them emotionally shattered. Truth must be spoken in loving and respectful ways. Even international treaties among different governments must convey the desire to have the other country's interest in mind.
None of us can stand it when people are unfriendly and mean-spirited toward us. We know kindness is fundamental to building trust whether in the family, the neighborhood, the legislature, or the workplace. We avoid unsympathetic, inconsiderate, and nasty neighbors, and we take our business elsewhere when a store owner treats us in an uncaring and callous way. But when we are pushed to the edge and feel kindness is getting us nowhere, do we turn unpleasant, disagreeable, and uncivil?
If you say to your spouse, "I know what I mean, I just cannot say it," you will leave them in the dark. What is a husband supposed to do with a statement like: "I need you to love me, and I know what that means, but I just cannot explain it to you"? As a wife, if you know what it means but cannot say it, you don't know what you mean. Thus, it is unfair to expect your husband to know what it means and looks like.The same holds true for a husband who declares,…
She prefers white carpet in the bedroom and he prefers dark brown. This is not a moral issue but a preference issue. A moral issue is when one of them chooses to steal the carpet from the retailer and demands the other go along with their plan. As for preferences, God designed us to enjoy differing tastes.
In part 1, we laid out in detail the clear double standard that many husbands hold that tells them they are allowed to gaze upon other women since God made them visually oriented, but that their wives are not to do the same. No doubt this is a common struggle in marriages across the land and throughout time, but it’s not enough to just admit the double standard. What can we do about it?
Do husbands have a double standard? May I invite you to consider one that I have observed? Some wives hear from their husbands, “I can look at women because God designed me to look at the female figure, but you must not look at men.” I am not talking about viewing pornography. That is a different matter. Instead, I am referring to the husband who habitually looks at women around him. At a restaurant he looks at the shapely waitresses as they walk by. At the mall, he checks out the women walking by him as he sits at the bench waiting for his wife. At church, he looks over at the two beautiful blonds talking by the stain-glassed windows.
My friend Sam Ericsson, who graduated from Harvard Law School and founded Advocates International, was instrumental in helping various nations draft new constitutions, especially those countries that formed after the Soviet Union gave them their independence. Sam told me that his chief point of advocacy with the leaders of these countries seeking his legal counsel was to create laws based on the Golden Rule. Sam conveyed that there is no better way to establish just laws than by doing to others what you would want done to you in the same situation. Sam shared with me that such laws are not difficult to figure out when the Golden Rule is acted on honestly with good will. If a person or a nation wants to know what is right, they can discover it by applying the Golden Rule.
During the 2016 NBA Finals, a player’s wife, understandably hurting and upset for her husband who had just been ejected from a game, fired out a tweet from her seat in the arena accusing the NBA of being rigged and out to get her husband for the sake of ratings. An hour and a half later, she deleted the tweet and apologized, but the damage had already been done. With 450,000 followers on Twitter, she had already seen her unfortunate tweet retweeted thousands of times, and the backlash had begun.
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