Last week, I shared that there are things I believe about my husband that simply aren’t true. (I would have liked to put that in the past tense, but I know this is something I will always have to work on. I believe you will too.) What is another lie I believed?
I believed my husband didn’t want to share his day with me.
When I get up (and after drinking a cup of coffee), I often have ideas I want to share with Bob. If he’s home for lunch, I have more to share. By dinner, I am brim full of conversation. Not Bob. It doesn’t bother him to be alone all day. He’s content to read and ponder.
Years ago, when Bob was in the process of looking for a new job, he would return from a job interview and I’d ask, “How’d it go?”
The reply would come: “Fine.”
“Fine? Fine!” What kind of report was that? I assumed he must be holding back. It must be that it didn’t go “fine” and he didn’t want to tell me because, if our positions had been reversed, I would have told him the story in living color.
After one such job interview, I decided to pursue him gently: “I really want to know what happened.” I tried to put it in his terms: “Give me a blow-by-blow description.”
And he did! It turned out, he wasn’t holding back. He was willing to give me the details if I wanted them. He just hadn’t seen the necessity of taking the time to do it because if I had been on an interview, he would have been satisfied with hearing just the crucial details.
While some husbands can be quite talkative, it is more common for them not to relate as many details as their wives would like them to. I was shocked how many husbands in our marriage class agreed with Bob! This is also the consensus of many relationship experts.
I stopped believing the lie when I was willing to give Bob the benefit of the doubt—to assume (as Emerson Eggerichs says) that he is a man of good will. It also helped to express my desire to him kindly but directly. I would highly recommend this method for getting more connection with non-talkative husbands—and with non-talkative wives in those marriages where the positions are reversed.
Stay tuned for Lie #3 next week. Thank you for sharing this post with your friends!
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I had to look twice to make sure just who wrote this! Thanks for the nuggets you shared Roxie. You are a special and talented lady who really walks the walk!