Is Your Husband Trying to Make You Feel More Secure, but in Ways You’re Not Recognizing?

A couple attended the Love and Respect Marriage Conference recently, and several weeks later the wife wrote to me to share some of the reasons why they had attended, along with her frustrations for the lack of changes she had seen in him since the conference. When I asked her what kind of changes her husband could make that would satisfy her for now, she wrote:

“The basic need that would satisfy me? I guess I could sum it up by saying that I want to feel pursued by him. I want him to act like I matter. To listen to me when I talk instead of looking through me. To notice me when I do or say something funny or when I am "fishing" for a compliment. I want him to "flirt" with me. I want him to say things that make me know/feel secure in his love. I feel so insecure so often. I would also like for him to admit that things are not great between us. He acts like "everything is fine." I have stated these things many times over the years. I have stopped, because it seems the more I ask for these types of things, the more he withdraws from me. The truth is, I do see a few slight signs of these things over the past few weeks. Besides saying, "I love you" more often, he has been telling me to remember that he would die for me, and then he smiles.”

This wife voices what millions of women would echo. To feel pursued by her husband, to matter to him just as much as she ever has, for him to flirt with her still, to listen to her whenever she speaks to him . . . Every other wife would rightfully voice these same desires. In fact, all these desires of hers—and other women—can be summed up by this wife’s honest confession: “I want him to say things that make me know/feel secure in his love. I feel so insecure so often.”

When a husband still pursues his wife as he did when he was courting her, when he continues to flirt with her as he did when he was falling in love with her, when he makes grand and obvious gestures to show her how much she matters to him, that wife feels secure in their relationship. She is confident he loves her and is committed to her.

However, most men are much less sentimental and romantic than the image these wives are desiring their husbands to be. They are not incurable romantics ooohhhing and ahhhing like the men in the Hallmark movies. However, while they may not leave a trail of rose petals on the floor or stare deeply into her eyes while wistfully using his hand to brush her hair away from her eyes, they remain fully devoted to her and will attempt to convey that, as this husband did in saying more often that he loves her and that he would die for her. This is his way of trying to satisfy her and make her feel more secure. 

So, when the husband’s attempts to exemplify security is so different from the ways his wife is wishing he would help her feel more secure, who is right and who is wrong? 

Well, both can be right and wrong. As already stated, what wife wouldn’t want to feel pursued by her husband in these ways? After all, there’s a reason the men in the movies act like this—it’s what the audience wants! So a wife is definitely not wrong for desiring her husband to love her like this and make her feel abundantly secure.

And if she has expressed these things to him many times, yet he has withdrawn from her as the wife who wrote me says, I would like to ask him how he would feel if he expressed a desire for sexual intimacy from his wife, and knowing that she was the only one who can satisfy this need of his she still chose to withdraw and leave his need unmet. Because she has a similar need for emotional intimacy that only he can meet, which is at the heart of her requests to him. So when he withdraws and leaves her requests unmet, how does he expect her to feel very loved by him?

But note that she says nothing here about meeting his needs and desires for her. Stop and think about this. Her longing is for him to make her feel like she matters, but what does she do to make him feel as though he matters? Many wives will say, "I show him love." Yes, true, but most men are already quite confident in their wife’s love for them. Ask a man, even one in conflict with his wife, “Does your wife love you?” and he’ll say, “Absolutely.” But ask him if she likes him, and he’s prone to say, “No, not today.” 

In many marriages, there is an undercurrent of disgust from the wife toward the husband, is there not? Is there not a basic negativity, criticism, and complaint based around all the ways they feel their husbands have come up short and failed in her expectations of him? What many wives do not see is that when they are calling out these “failures” to be noticed, they are stabbing their husbands in the eyes with contempt in the process.

The wife who wrote me gave me a clue to something else when she also wrote, "I see no effort on his part except to say ‘I love you’  more often. He still refuses to wear his wedding ring and is not very responsive to talking about our relationship. I feel all alone. He is not mean or violent or anything. He is really a great man." However, it was revealed later that her husband works construction, so he doesn't wear a ring for safety reasons; and my conjecture about his not talking about the relationship is simple: She feels unloved by her husband, therefore she doesn't feel respect for him. That message frightens any male. It is too painful and shameful to talk about not feeling respected by his own wife. To him, the safer course of action is to remain silent. This doesn't solve the problem, but it does lessen the pain. As with most men, in the past, he has probably stated that he will try to make her feel more loved, but later in another "talk" it surfaces that he fell way short of her expectations. It is safer now to avoid talking than to talk and hear of his failures and feel required to make a new commitment to be more like the man she has imaged in her head, which he finds impossible.

But for this wife desiring to feel more secure in her marriage, I would point her to what she said about him telling her more often that he loves her and even that he would die for her. Though I don’t know her husband, I know men in general, and this is huge! He’s really trying. She may not feel he always listens to her when she talks to him, but it seems he listened at the conference. Baby steps, I would encourage her. Baby steps. Combine these baby steps with her admission that “He is not mean or violent or anything. He is really a great man,” and I would propose things are better than she may feel at times.

Finally, I absolutely understand that her husband, along with many men, still has a long ways to go in learning to better show unconditional love toward his wife. We are all a work-in-progress. But I like to ask wives, "How easy is it for you to put on respect toward your husband when he fails to be as loving as you wish?" God commands wives to be women of respectful dignity (Ephesians 5:33; 1 Peter 3:1-2). Yet, most every wife feels that's almost impossible when their husband has not been very loving to them. Similarly, how easy could it possibly be for a husband to love a woman who has an undercurrent of disrespect for him when he fails to be as loving as he ought to be?

We need to give grace to one another. God commands the husband to love and the wife to respect precisely because we don't do this naturally when feeling unloved and disrespected ourselves. Let's not be quick to throw stones. Instead, let’s continue to extend long leashes of grace knowing that we are married to goodwilled people who are trying in their own ways to make us feel more secure in their love and respect for us. It just may be in ways we aren’t yet recognizing.