What’s Really Going On with the Husband Who Doesn’t Want His Wife’s Input?

Sadly, many a man will not include his wife in decisions because he fears her input as an attempt to control him rather than as her desire to be his helpful teammate. Not only is this man extremely insecure (which calls into question his manhood), but some would call him imprudent.

If I were to ask every man reading this, "Should a husband include his wife in the purchase of a home?" I would bet the farm 99 percent of you would say yes. That should seem obvious to all, right? Perhaps the rare exception is the billionaire who surprises his wife with a third home in Lake Tahoe, but that might be considered more gift giving than it is making a major decision.

That said, what could be going on underneath the surface with this husband who apparently falls into the 1 percent? Listen to what his wife emailed to me:

I found out accidentally from a conversation with his father that my husband has been looking for houses without my knowledge. I brought this up to him and it ended up in a huge fight. He said I was trying to trap him; when in reality I prayed about how to discuss this with him and honestly brought it up in what I thought was a non-threatening way. I just wanted to discuss it! He told me, “I am 45 [bleeping] years old and if I want to buy a house I will buy a house. I don't need your permission. I am NOT going to bring everything to a committee with you.” But I told him that I did not want to grant my permission but to be part of the process. 

I have acknowledged to him many times that he is the head of our marriage, but it doesn't seem to help. He seems very set on doing what he wants to do and no wife is going to interfere with that. I feel like I and my opinion don't matter. It makes me sad that he would not want to include me in this and many other major decisions. It seems he understands submission as a dictatorship. He told me he was going to buy a house and I would like it. 

I know this story makes him sound terrible, when he is a very wonderful man. He is kind, funny, intelligent, and usually considerate of my feelings. Since we have been married, though, he has become someone I don't recognize. I suppose he would say the same of me. But he is no longer romantic . . . ever! I feel like he sees me as nothing more than a pain. I wish he would realize I can make his life easier and better by being his helpmate. I do not believe that Jesus meant for women to be completely unheard in the marriage. I feel like my husband is dominated by a stronghold of fear right now. Fear of losing all the rights and freedoms he had as a single man. I feel very unimportant to him and very unloved.

Perhaps this wife is overreacting because she selectively heard an isolated statement made in frustration about being 45, "and if I want to buy a house I will buy a house and I don't need your permission." Perhaps she is unfair to him.

But that she defends him as kind, funny, intelligent, and considerate tells me she is not trying to throw him under the bus. There's no hint that she is lopsided in her account.

Painfully, I have come across this type of guy more often than I wish to acknowledge. Instead of engaging his wife on a substantial subject, he flies solo and keeps the process and decision to himself. Though barring a wife from a home search is a rarity, when it comes to other high-priced items, like a truck, a hunting trip with buddies, or other things a guy hankers after but fears his wife will question and challenge him, he flies stealthily.

Why does he not only exclude her input but intentionally not even seek it? Let me offer four reasons:

1. He lacks confidence in the merits of what he values. 

Of course, he doesn't think he lacks confidence in the merits of his position. He believes he is right. But because he keeps his ideas secret, he demonstrates that he does not have the assurance that his proposals about a new home or a hunting trip or any other major decision will carry their weight.

Here's the deal. Good ideas are good ideas and should be floated across the room. Good leaders will float any idea across the room and ask people to throw darts at it and try to pop it by showing the idea lacks merit. Good leaders welcome people into this process. They have learned in the long run that if they do not do this, their bad ideas, kept secret but acted on, will come home to roost. A husband who does not allow his wife to be part of the home search process does not have good ideas nor is he a good leader, and he has little foresight on what is about to recoil on him unfavorably.

In this instance, most wives naturally nest, so the home is an extension of her personality. To exclude her from this process of purchasing a home is to overlook God's hardwiring of her as a female. A husband who believes that excluding his wife from the process will eliminate her complaints will soon walk into the buzzsaw of “unhappy wife, unhappy life.” In not discerning how God designed women to nest, he puts her in a position to feel like the guy who moved to Montana to hunt and fish, and the day after they arrive, his wife destroys his rifles and rods and scatters the broken parts on the bedroom floor, then chains him to the bed for six months to prove they are equals in the marriage. She has decided he has nothing to say about living in Montana. Only she is in the know about their future there.

How crazy is this thinking? Just as outlandish as it is to exclude a wife from a home purchase.

In excluding his wife from the home search, he is doing here what is comparable to a guy who was trained and hired to be a welder making $60 an hour. However, his manager, unknown to him, decides that he must instead teach ballet to the preschool girls in the company daycare for $20 an hour. How many seconds before this guy rebels against this coercion and failure to recognize who he is and what he can contribute? Similarly, the wife left out of the major decision-making feels coerced, unrecognized, and devalued. She will rebel in one way or another.

Furthermore, it is a well-known truth that if you want people to own a decision, they must be part of the decision-making process. This welder should have at least, as a gesture of honor, been included in the discussion about his future job! He should have been permitted to counter, "I have no passion, interest, skill, or knowledge to teach ballet to preschool girls. Please hear me. I am a welder. Let me weld." When a wife is not part of purchasing a home, which is every woman's nest, she will not own the decision. She will be devastated by the degrading treatment. When a husband decides the home purchase is his to make and to exclude her is his right, he will find his wife unhappy—as unhappy as he would be to teach ballet or be chained to a bed and see his expensive rods and rifles broken on the floor.

The bottom line is, this guy does not have confidence in his own ideas. Therefore, because he cannot persuade her with his words, he silences his wife from using her words. When he cannot propose something with substance, he prohibits his wife from proposing anything. When he lacks confidence in his ideas to convince her, he contains her.

2. He lacks confidence in who he is as a person. 

This isn’t about him having the freedom to purchase a home without his wife’s input. There is a deeper struggle within him, probably due to his sense that at age 45 his life is passing him by. He feels insignificant and dissatisfied, perhaps due to the fact that he feels everyone around him controls him. This in part explains his remark to his wife that she’s not going to control him. Feeling as though he’s not his own man, he will attempt to show he is a man. He arches his back against his wife. He appears like an ape who runs at his threat beating his chest and hooting. “Stay away! I am in charge of this domain!” What a way to achieve manhood, huh? “Shut up, woman. Stay out of this. This is my territory. I am the man.” There, he feels good about himself.

This is his internal struggle and has nothing to do with his wife. At age 45, this is likely a classic midlife crisis. Feeling like a nobody, he has to exert his independence by looking at homes without his wife. So, in disbarring her from her marital role, he seeks to prove to himself and to her that he’s in charge and mighty. In excluding her from the decision-making process, he can feel like a man and corroborate his prominence.

However, excluding his wife from the decision-making process about purchasing a home will not prove his independence and manhood. That’s like asking the question, “Do you walk to work or carry your lunch?” There’s no correlation. This guy’s manhood is not determined by his ability to exclude his wife from the decision-making process. Preventing her from doing something doesn't prove that he is somebody. Even so, he correlates his masculinity with his right and ability to keep her in the dark. Having said that, if there is any correlation, banning her from the process causes him to appear less than a manly man.

What if his wife dies and he can no longer exclude her from the decision-making process? Is he now less than a man? How sad that some guys create criteria for their manhood that entails controlling their wives. It is as though they are saying to the world, "Hear ye, hear ye! By viewing homes without my wife, I am showing that I am clearly in charge and thus the man." How trivial and superficial is this?

He needs to ask himself what’s going on inside of him. Is he fearing that he’s been doing nothing else than spinning his wheels or chasing his tail, so he needs to put his foot down and make a decision of substance on his own? Is he fearing that he’s never really accomplished much in life as an independent person, so he must overcome that fear by blocking his wife’s input? Can he only feel like a winner if he makes her feel like a loser?

3. He lacks confidence in the goodness of his wife.

That this wife defends him as kind, funny, intelligent, and considerate shows she is not trying to throw him under the bus. Instead, she emails me to find out how to respond to his exclusion of her from the process of working as a team in finding a home. She is trying to figure out why he bans her.

She portrays what I have recognized in thousands of wives: a desire and an attempt to understand and empathize with why he excludes her. She tries to give him the benefit of the doubt when asking, Is there a "stronghold of fear"? Does he "fear losing all the rights and freedoms he had as a single man"?

How does a guy living with a woman for years conclude that she is trying to trap him?

How did he miss her belief that she viewed him as the head and herself as his helper? Why did he not believe that her aim was to make his life easier and better by being his helpmate?

How did he come to a point where he viewed her as a person who requires him to get her permission to do whatever he wants to do? Why would he overstate the case against her as one of two people who wished to make a decision via committee?

How did he not know of her praying heart—a heart that prayed about making sure that she did not appear as though she was threatening him or trying to control him?

Why did he interpret her request just to talk about a home purchase as a clandestine attempt to interfere with his decision-making process?

How did he arrive at that place in the marriage where he felt that he needed to be a dictator in order to get her to submit?

Over the years, many husbands have reported how stunned they are that their wives remember almost everything in the past. As we often say, it's not that she gets hysterical but she gets historical. One reason for this is that you can see very clearly why a woman would not forget an episode like the home purchase scenario. The whole thing sends a message to the woman that she does not matter. This whole exclusion is ostracism of her as a person. This is why she states that she feels sad, unimportant, and unloved.

I can predict that this situation will resurface in a conversation between the two of them when she seeks reassurance from him that he loves her, sees her as a person of goodwill, and goodness. But a guy like this will reply, "Brother, here you go again. All you do is gripe. I'm sick and tired of it."

Why would this fellow respond this way? He is such an insecure and immature male, that he interprets the wife God gifted to him for life as a blessing, as a wretched annoyance he must tolerate and avoid as best he can. We might refer to him as a doofus.

He has no confidence in her goodness when she questions him.

When she questions him, all bets are off. Drastic times demand drastic measures. To this insecure man, when she raises questions, this means she is calling him into question. That is insurrection. She must submit to him as the head of the house. Submission means she must not question him but go along with what he has decided. She must be silent. She must not interfere with his decision-making process. When he holds up his hand, that gesture means, "Stop talking, woman! I am in charge here. This is my decision to make. I don't need your permission. I am NOT going to bring everything to a committee with you."

In his eyes, he must suppress "the Jezebel" for her own good and the cause of God.

4. He lacks confidence in God to direct his/their efforts.

This guy does not have confidence in the Lord’s ability to guide the two of them in a conversation about the purchase of a home, or for that matter during any moment when she brings up a question about something he has done, is doing, or will do.

When this wife asks humble and honest questions, one would hope he could say to her, “Here are several of my ideas why we should move forward on this, but let’s spend the next several days praying together about this. I really want God's wisdom and I know that He also speaks to you, so let's put our heads together on this issue after we first pray." But to an insecure and immature man, that set of statements means full surrender to his wife. In his eyes, she will get her way the minute he suggests they pray. She will say, "God isn't telling me that we should do this." So, the guy keeps prayer out of this, in addition to his thought process leading up to the decision, since in his opinion, his wife will question his ideas and use the Lord against him.

For all intents and purposes, this husband renders the Lord impotent to use him in his wife's life by talking to her humbly, lovingly, and truthfully about his ideas behind a particular decision. And, he has no confidence that the Lord might validate his good ideas to his wife. As we said earlier, he doesn't have confidence in the standalone merit of his ideas. Instead, he wants what he wants when he wants it. The way he ensures that he's going to get what he wants is by keeping his wife and the Lord out of the process.

Leadership to him is lordship.

This is quite remarkable when a man says he’s willing to die for Jesus Christ but cannot trust Him during a conversation with his wife who might say some things that he doesn’t want to hear. Therefore he concludes that as the husband he must be the dictator since not even God Himself can convict his wife. How sad that some Christ-following husbands do not have the confidence on a daily basis that the Lord can show up in conversations with their wives.

This husband fails to see two things.

One, he fails to see his wife as a Proverbs 31 woman. He would not say about his wife what we read in verse 12, "She does him good and not evil all the days of her life."

Two, he fails to see that he is acting like a Nabal, who in 1 Samuel 25:3 is described as “harsh and evil in his dealings." Then later in verse 17, "he is such a worthless man that no one can speak to him."

As I said at the beginning, 99 percent of men would agree that, of course, a husband should include his wife in the purchase of a new home. So just because you, too, agree with that seemingly obvious situation, don’t write off what I’m communicating here. The issue is not whether or not you agree to include your wife in the major decision-makings, but it is in the confidence you have regarding you and your wife.

Every husband needs to honestly ask himself four questions during decisions that involve his wife.

• Does he lack confidence in the merits of his ideas?
• Does he lack confidence in who he is as a person?
• Does he lack confidence in the goodness of his wife?
• Does he lack confidence in God to direct his/their efforts?

If he believes he might be able to say yes to any of these, then he must then consider:

• If he lacks confidence in the merits of his idea, then does that not affirm that God intends him to share his idea with his wife, his helper-suitable, so that she can either help show him why his idea may not be the best one at that time or even give him the confidence he needs to boldly move forward on it?
• If he lacks confidence in who he is as a person, then who better to share his internal struggles with than his best friend who he knows loves him unconditionally and always wants him and their marriage/family to succeed?
• If he lacks confidence in the goodness of his wife, what proof does he have to hold to this belief? Has she truly shown herself to be a Jezebel who is only looking out for herself and has no goodwilled intentions for her husband? What justifies this view he has of his wife?
• If he lacks confidence in God to direct his/their efforts, then does he not see that this is about his own lack of faith, not her lack of ability to help? Or is he ready to deny the truth of Scripture when it says, “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand” (Proverbs 37:23-24)?