What Can Genesis Teach a Wife about How to Encourage the Struggling Businessman?

It’s amazing how often our search for answers to conflicts and situations we are dealing with in the twenty-first century ends up taking us back to the beginning of Genesis. Though the garden was a time and place that could never be confused with any part of our lives today—a paradise on earth, only one man and one woman, no sin, no bosses, no politics, no parents or in-laws—oftentimes the story of creation and first life on earth can be an encyclopedia of answers to some of our most common conflicts today.

For example, read an email I received recently from a concerned and loving wife:

I fear my husband is suffering from depression due to his lack of success getting our independent business off the ground. Nothing I say to encourage him seems to do any good. I know he is capable of great things and all I want is to see him happy. What can I do as a wife to inspire him to the greatness God has put in him? I feel like I am starting to shut down emotionally since he doesn't seem to respond at all to my attempts to encourage him.

He Was Created to Work

First, this husband, like many across the world, seems to be putting his blood, sweat, and tears into starting a business. And he does so because that drive was designed within him at Creation! Whether it’s by way of his own business or as an employee of someone else’s business, every man knows that he has it within him to work—and to want to work! Because this is part of what he was created to do.

Back in the garden, upon being formed out of the dust of the ground, man was given his first assignment by his Creator: “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).

Even before Eve was created, before God established the first and most beautiful relationship on earth, God gave Adam a job to do. Not even paradise was a place with free handouts. The trees provided the food, but Adam was to cultivate and keep them.

Fast-forward to today, this same inborn desire to work and achieve remains inside every man, including the husband of the wife who wrote me above. And not only does this man desire to work, but he has the entrepreneurial spirit within him to run his own business. But sadly, it hasn’t taken off yet, and he is depressed. 

I would recommend that this wife start by affirming within her husband that she not only recognizes his desire to work and achieve by way of his independent business, but that she fully respects and values his mighty efforts to do so. She does not give details about how she is trying to encourage him, but if she does not know already, she should understand that he spells love R-E-S-P-E-C-T. He already knows how much she loves him and certainly values her love. But he needs to be reaffirmed that she respects him and his desire to run a business in order to provide for their family, especially since he is depressed with his perceived failure to do so thus far.

Even though his wife’s outward display of respect for him and his desire to work and achieve will not have a direct effect on his business’s success, it should absolutely have an invaluable effect on him personally. 

One caveat to add here, before moving along: Yes, women can feel depressed in the same way over their challenges with regard to their career. We are not trying to say something against our daughters in our attempt to help explain the behaviors and feelings of our sons. Often when a woman is depressed, though, she will want to talk about her feelings whereas too often a husband not only won’t talk, he tends to interpret this wife’s comments to suggest he isn’t good enough. Go figure! 

But this leads us to the second connection to Genesis I want to make here:

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His Blue Reactions Will Not Look Like Your Pink Ones

The wife above wrote, “Nothing I say to encourage him seems to do any good. . . . I feel like I am starting to shut down emotionally since he doesn't seem to respond at all to my attempts to encourage him.”

Assuming she is trying to encourage him with messages of respect for who he is as a husband, father, and provider who desires to work and achieve, then I would tell her simply, “Don’t stop doing what you’re doing!” She is indeed having an effect on him; she just doesn’t see it.

Again, we can go back to the garden, at the moment of creation. Genesis 1:27 says, “. . . male and female He created them.” That is hardly news, of course. But what this often skimmed-over phrase underlines is that men and women are very different. Later in the New Testament, Peter notes that difference when he instructs husbands to treat wives in a specific way, “since she is a woman” (1 Peter 3:7).

If you’re familiar with Love and Respect at all, then you most likely already know that I like to picture the difference between men and women with the illustration that men look at the world through blue sunglasses, they hear the world through their blue hearing aids, and they speak using a blue megaphone. Alternatively, women do all of these things via shades of pink. Neither is wrong, just different; however, their pink and blue lenses cause their interpretation of things to be at odds to some degree.

This woman’s husband is not one of her female friends, who in the midst of her depression says, “Oh, thank you for your words. You are so sweet.” He is male; he is different. Oftentimes, he will even remain silent. But she can’t conclude that she isn’t getting through. If she continues to give voice to what she believes about him, and he knows she is being sincere and not superficial, then he will come to value the incredible woman she is, if he doesn’t already. 

And in his own “blue” way, he will acknowledge his appreciation for her encouragement. It might be a short, out-of-the-blue thank-you text in the middle of the day. He may decide to spend the weekend doing some chores around the house she had been asking him to do but that he had been too depressed to get motivated to do before. But somehow, someway, a goodwilled and loving husband will appreciate and acknowledge his wife’s encouragement to him in his tough times. She just may need to train her pink hearing aids and sunglasses how to better interpret his blue actions.