Differences Between Men & Women, Part 5: Relationship Direction

Another difference between men and women is the view of the relationship itself. Man was not created for woman, but woman for man (1 Cor. 11:9). The husband’s attitude toward the wife is not the same as her attitude toward him, and it cannot and should not be. She was created for him. Her focus is on him. He was not created for her. The man’s focus is on the goal, and the woman comes in to aid him in that. She is not the focus; she is a support and helper for the focus.

Courtship is done on the woman’s terms, where everything is relationship-centered. The man’s goal is to establish a marriage relationship with her, so for the time being their focuses are aligned. Then they get married, and the husband gets on with his life. Now he doesn’t want to sit and talk to her all the time. Courtship is an unreal world; we can’t live like that forever. That’s why romance novels are so popular; women are trying to live all of life in the courtship stage. Men are not built to be that way forever. Realize that it is not that he doesn’t love you anymore. God has given him other work to do, and He has given him you to help him accomplish that work.

This has to do with direction, not priorities. Every Christian husband and father ought to have his wife and children as his #1 earthly priority. But that does not mean the family is what he thinks about all the time. My work is related to my wife indirectly (supply her needs, pay the bills, etc.), but her work is directly focused on me (e.g., making the dinner that I will come home and eat, washing the clothes I wear). Her day is built around me and is directly related to me.

The wife can think that because her husband does not think about her the same way she thinks about him, he doesn’t care about her. She’s wrong, but she’s also partly right. It is true that he doesn’t care in the same way she does—he’s not supposed to. Our roles are different. If we accept that, then we can be happy in God’s design. If we chafe at it, it will be destructive. Wives are called to help their husbands, and they can find fulfillment in that. Husbands cannot find fulfillment in the same way, because they were not created to be house-husbands. Just because you can do something (e.g., be a successful career woman) does not mean you should do it. You can pound nails with a crescent wrench, but what does it do to the wrench? The question is not what can you do, but what were you created to do? If we both operate the way we are created to, things run very smoothly, and we both find fulfillment.

Most men, when they get married, have all the qualifications of a new husband, i.e., they are dumb. As a new husband, I found out that I could offend my wife and have not the slightest idea of how I did it. (It certainly wasn’t malicious.) I was naïve, but I wasn’t stupid, so I could eventually figure out what was wrong and put things right.

Let’s take a scenario. Suppose the husband comes into the kitchen and says something. Whatever he says, the wife is offended by it. He wanders out, and she sits there being hurt, hurt, hurt, initially. Then she grows resentful. She holds a private grand jury and finds out he’s indicted. And convicted. And hanged by the neck until dead.

Later on, the husband comes back into the house and learns he’s in trouble. What the wife had done was say, “I couldn’t have said what he said unless I had x motive. So he must have had this awful motive to say that.” The husband is not just accused of what he said, but why he said it.

Then they get to talking about it, and she finds out he that did not have that awful motive, or any bad motive at all. Meanwhile, she’s hanged him by the neck until dead, and she intends to hold it against him until he repents—and he can’t repent, because he has no clue what to repent of. When you add these instances up over the years, you get very hurt wives and husbands who are increasingly irritated at the wives who resent them so much.

There is always a middle ground. We need to meet each other there and adjust. Generally, men don’t adapt to their wives as much as women adapt to their husbands. The men need to do more bending. Give to each other in the areas you need. Frequently, both spouses are reticent to give in the area the other needs. All good marriages must meet in the middle. Men need to do more bending to meet in the middle, and women need to do less judging of motives.

(To be continued.)