Be a better husband.
That is the message I get all the time from popular entertainment, supposed relationship gurus, and just about every pastor I come across. Sometimes I wonder if the intended audience is really men.
I don’t know about you, but I find self-improvement to be an exhausting waste of time when it is foisted upon me through threats and scare tactics. Often times I hear about how a man will lose his wife if he is not a good husband to her.
And what advice are we supposed to follow? For one thing, we are often told to listen to our wives. The insinuation being that if we don’t listen to our wives and do exactly what they say, then somehow we are a bad person. Shame on us for giving to unreasonable demands.
Secondly, it always seems to be a case of our wives being the paragon of virtue while husbands are the paragon of vice. We are slobs, lazy, selfish porn-addicts who demand food, sex, and silence from our spouses without question. We are horrible men for not giving our wives a specific kind of bouquet on Valentine’s Day, for forgetting certain important date, and for not making a reservation at an expensive restaurant. Never mind that we are working, saving, and spending in a manner to secure our future. No, we have to have it now.
I really makes me sick. Women are supposed to be sinners too after all. More so than that, they are supposed to submit to their fathers then their husbands. This is the Biblical charge to women. They are not even supposed to speak in Church gatherings or teach men. And yet, we see this happening all the time in the West. Apparently the Word of God is wrong when it comes to female headship.
But I digress. The problem that most churches and secular relationship gurus see in marriages is almost always with the men. It is never the woman’s fault, even as she is leaving him for a “better” man, taking the kids, the house, and a third of his income with her. No, it isn’t her fault that she conceived a child with another man and now her husband has to pay child support for a kid that isn’t even his.
And there I am getting slightly off focus again. Look, to be a better husband, you will have to do things that run counter to what society and culture tells you. You will have to assert leadership over your wife (the first step is to say, “No”) and you will have to do so in the face of extreme emotional anguish from your spouse, especially if you’ve let her run things for a long time.
It is not an easy path nor is it is a fun one. Your marriage will be a constant power struggle for a time until she learns to submit to your leadership and authority. Even then, there will be times where she will rebel and test you. But you must remain strong. A good man is one who takes care of his family and carries the responsibility of the household on his shoulders. A bad one is one who lets his wife run his household.