Why does your husband do what he does instead of what you think he should do? Discover three reasons in this brief explanations. It’s essential info for any woman who is looking for marriage help.
There are three reasons that every man does certain things and doesn’t do other things, and sometimes those other things are the very things you think you should do. But when you realize that he’s got so much of this embedded in his DNA, and that is really the way God designed him, it is the purposes that God has given him to fulfill in life, And he’s going to go for that first. It’s just part of his nature, if you will, to do these things.
And the first of those things is protect.
A man is driven to protect. He protects other people, and he protects other people lots of times to his own greater risk. You know, he might risk hurting himself. You look at our heroes, the Marines, soldiers, sailors, policemen, firefighters, all of those predominantly male heroes that will go out of their way, will step into harm’s way to protect someone else.
Now I got to tell you, if he is under attack, whether it’s physically or emotionally, he will protect himself. You can count on that. In fact, that’s the primary reason that men stonewall, is they are protecting themselves. But again, we don’t have time go into all of that. Just know that he is driven to protect and that he will protect himself if he needs to.
The second reason he does what he does is he looks for ways to provide for you.
A lot of men really want to be the breadwinner. They want to be the one that makes the most money. That isn’t always the case in every family. And when it’s not, the relationship is a little bit more difficult. I’ve not seen a situation where the woman made more than the man, and the man felt great about it.
He always wants to be the one to provide, and if you will, that could be part of the way that he tries to protect her. But he’s looking for ways to provide. He’s looking for ways, if you will, to contribute to her life, to make her life better. There’s reasons for that. We’ll talk about that in the next section.
The other thing that seems to be so deeply ingrained, embedded in a man’s personhood, is to solve problems. He actually finds great satisfaction in being able to take a problem and figure out a solution. And that’s why he doesn’t listen to you when you’re complaining about somebody or you’re expressing emotions.
His brain gets triggered right away.
There’s a problem here. We’ve got to fix this. Now, it doesn’t feel that way to you because most of the time you just want him to listen. But in his mind, his automatic response is to solve the problem. Remember, he has been taught not to express his own emotions. In fact, he’s been taught to avoid them altogether.
So if he’s going to avoid his own emotions, guess what he’s going to encourage you to do? He’s going to encourage you to not dwell on your emotions, but to move real fast to a solution.
Now here’s a quick tip for you.
If you want to share something with him that’s emotional, keep it as brief as you can, okay, because he’s going to get flooded with his own emotions pretty quickly. But tell him at the start, I’ve got something that I want to share with you and I don’t need a solution, I just need my best friend to hear me out. And when I’m done, I just want you to hold me and tell me it’s going to be okay.”
And then get his consent for it. And then keep it brief. Take your comfort from him when he offers it, and be very glad that he loved you enough to listen and to offer the comfort that you asked for, instead of trying to solve the problem that you didn’t want his help with in the first place.
Really kind of a tricky one in that problem-solving area. Again, we could say more about that. I could talk for days about all of this stuff and there’s so many examples that I’ve got in my head that I really don’t have time to share with you right now. But there will be a point for that.
When we talk about a man’s purposes or the reasons that he does things, the why behind his behavior, we have to remember there is a bottom line on that. And the Bottom line comes, I believe, from Ephesians 5, where Paul says, “Submit to your husband out of reverence for Christ.”
Why should you submit to your husband?
Well, let’s see. If he’s supposed to protect you, if he wants to provide for you and he loves solving problems for you, then you’re going to submit to him so you can let him do the job God gave him to do.
- It doesn’t mean you’re not capable.
- It doesn’t mean that you have to dumb yourself down.
- It simply means that you allow space and you allow freedom for him to be the man that God created him to be.
And oftentimes that means he’s taking leadership. And how he takes leadership depends a lot on how you respond to him. No one can be a hero if no one will let him be the hero. No one can lead if no one is willing to follow.
That’s the beauty of marriage, I believe, is that we engage in this beautiful dance together, where the woman gets to be the woman, and the man gets to be the man. And you orchestrate something that you can’t orchestrate anyplace else in your life. You can only do it in your marriage.
You can accomplish a lot of things, but like I tell my clients, it’s like this is the one place where you get to be the girl. Let’s admit it, every one of us deep in our heart longs to be the princess, and this is the place where we get to do it every single day, and I love it.