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FF: Why Can’t She Be The Way My Girlfriends Were?

by The Generous Husband | Jan 31, 2025 | Friday Flashback, Seeing Clearly, Sexuality, Understanding Her

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A comment on a recent poll read, “If only my wife treated me as well as my sinful high school girlfriends so many years ago”.

I suspect many men who did more than hold hands with someone before their wife have had similar thoughts. If you got more, or better, when you were single, it’s understandable to think this way. What you need to realise is this is comparing apples to orange juice.

What a woman does sexually before marriage has little or nothing to do with drive, desire, preferences, or enjoyment.

Even in most Christian circles, some level of sex is required to get repeat dates. In marginally Christian or non-Christian circles, the expectation is greater. Going from dating to a serious relationship means more is expected, and if you want to get married, you better be ready to do just about anything he wants.

Try to put yourself into this reality, the reality of many young women in Western cultures:

You want companionship, love, and eventually marriage. You like guys, but you don’t have a huge sex drive, and you feel being sexual is questionable if not wrong. If you engage in sex, the guy is usually done before you really get started. At best, they get theirs, and you get nothing. Or even worse, he gets his and leaves you horny. If it were up to you, you would avoid sex at least until you were engaged. However, you find most guys expect sex, and expect more as the relationship continues. You feel your choices are offering sex you do not really want or being alone. Being alone seems a worse fate, so you engage in sex. You don’t want to be doing anything, and you don’t get much pleasure out of what you do, so it doesn’t matter much what you do or how often you do it. It all feels wrong on one level, so how can you say, “I don’t like that” or “I think that is wrong” to anything?

Gentlemen, can you grasp this? Can you understand the bad, no-good-choices situation many women experience when single? Can you understand why they say yes when they want to say no? Can you see why they say yes to things they don’t want to do? What they offer is not real; it is just them playing a part. This has two bad results: it creates men who want from their wives what their girlfriends did in sin, and it creates women who neither want nor enjoy sex. When such a man and such a woman marry, it is a given they are going to have sexual problems.

If you have expectations created by sinful sex, you really need to repent of the sex and see the expectations created as fruit of the poisoned tree. Expecting your wife to meet those expectations is asking her to pay for your sins. If you’ve been doing this, you need to deal with it, seek her forgiveness, and promise to change.

[This post first appeared Oct 27, 2012.]

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Friday Flashback: Embracing Multiple Perspectives: The Pitfalls of Black and White

by The Generous Husband | Jun 16, 2023 | Audio, Be a grownup, Change, Friday Flashback, ZIMAGE

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A friend sent me a kind correction on how I used punctuation and quotation marks in a recent post. She knows I care about doing things right, and that I would not be offended – which I was not. However, while she was right, I was not wrong. I use logical quotation style, also called British style. In this style, punctuation is inside the quotation marks only if it is part of the quote. This makes more sense to me, which is why I do it. I suppose my doing this means those across the pond think me wise, while my countrymen think me odd.

My point here is there is often more than one right way to do something. Sometimes there are many right ways to do something. I know this is a difficult thing for those who are black and white people. The problem is when a black and white person thinks there’s only one way to do something, it makes all other ways wrong! This leads to friction, and can be especially problematic in marriage.

Another aspect of this is the “but my way is more efficient” or “my way makes more sense”. The British style quotation makes more sense to me, and since it’s what comes to me naturally, it’s easier for me. That doesn’t mean it’s easier or more logical for everyone. Even if your way is faster for you, it may not be faster for your wife. Alternatively, maybe it could be faster, but not as easy or obvious. Regardless, her way is not wrong just because it’s not how you would do it.

I’ve seen men who never cook insist their wife set up the kitchen in the way they think it should be. They “know what’s right”, and I think these guys honestly believe they are doing their wife a favour. The wife on the other hand does not feel blessed; she feels she is being treated like a child, or that her thoughts are being dismissed as irrelevant. It seems to me if he doesn’t cook, he has no say unless it’s a valid health or safety issue.

How about you – are you doing this to your wife in any area? Can you back off and accept that her way is better for her? Both she and your marriage will benefit!

[This post first appeared May 7, 2012.]

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A Double Standard To Embrace

by The Generous Husband | Nov 28, 2022 | Audio, Seeing Clearly, Understanding Her, ZIMAGE

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Most double standards are rubbish, but there is one I strongly advocate. I have higher expectations of myself than you do of others and I’m tougher on myself than I am on Lori.

Being harder on yourself than your wife about things such as being late, failing to do what is promised, mild dishonesty, rudeness, and grumpiness shows her that you want to be the best husband you can be. It also shows her that you’re all about grace and second chances. The upside is this behaviour puts you in a good place to lovingly ask more from her. If you expect her to meet a slightly lower standard than the one you keep, she can’t say you’re unfair or asking too much. You’ve shown it can be done and you’re asking her to do almost as much.

This kind of double standard is a great way to show your love. For example, if “the rule” is the one who cooks doesn’t have to do the dishes, be sure to always do all the dishes when she cooks. And sometimes when you cook, do some or all of the dishes even though you don’t have to.

There are, of course, places where this breaks down, especially when you try to apply it to things other than behaviour. Don’t apply this where your abilities vary. For example, I have moderate face blindness and Lori doesn’t remember numbers well. It would be wrong for me to expect her to remember numbers as well as I can or for her to gripe at me for not remembering someone. We can also get in trouble in areas where we care too much about something that’s not a big deal to our wife. For example, if you consider using your dinner fork for a salad to be wrong, that’s fine; if you get upset at your wife for doing this after having tried to “educate her”, that’s going too far.

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Friday Flashback: Different Isn’t Wrong … Or Stupid

by The Generous Husband | Nov 18, 2022 | Audio, Encouragement, Friday Flashback, Links to good stuff, Seeing Clearly, YOU4HER, ZIMAGE

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It seems we live in a world that looks down on “different”. Even in so-called “open-minded” circles, only certain differences are tolerated and even fewer are praised.

What about your marriage – are you open to different? Do you and your wife “allow” each other to be unique or do you work to keep each other within certain bounds? I’m not talking about moral issues here, this is about different ways of seeing and doing things.

The great thing about different is it allows you to see things the crowd will never see. Different sees ideas, beauty, and innovation others miss. Different sees a way to solve a problem others can’t solve. When we discourage different we reduce society; when we encourage different we enrich society. In marriage it’s the same way; encouraging your wife where she’s different enriches your marriage. But limiting her limits your marriage in many ways.

By the way, this one is a bit personal to me. I’m a bit eccentric. Actually, I’m a bit more than a bit eccentric. Early in our marriage, Lori was often embarrassed by/for me or concerned about how I might be perceived. I fully understand why she felt this way. However, she didn’t stay embarrassed or concerned; she grew to accept and love my oddities. She still warns me if she thinks I’m going to offend or hurt others (and I’m deeply grateful for that), but she has given me the amazing gift of acceptance. You can give your wife the same gift if you choose.

[This post first appeared Jan 24, 2012.]

A post worth reading:

Dr. Corey Carlisle | Backyard treasures ◄ What are you missing in your own back yard? Or about your wife?

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Marriages Usually Die Quietly

by The Generous Husband | Sep 6, 2022 | Aff Link, Marriage Killer, The "D" word, ZIMAGE

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This is the way the marriage ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. ~ With apologies to T. S. Eliot

We think of marriages coming to a fiery end with a great deal of screaming. I’ve seen that, but ending with a whimper is far more common. Years of problems have sucked all the life out of one or both spouses and when one walks away or hands over divorce papers the other can’t manage any anger. This is often true even when one would like the marriage to continue. There’s not enough emotion left for the marriage to fight for it, so they let their spouse end it with little more than a few weak words of protest.

This is why it’s often impossible to save a marriage once one person has filed or is ready to do so. The marriage has been brain dead and on life support for years, and the divorce is just pulling the plug.

Sometimes a man misinterprets the end of his wife’s “constant efforts” to change their marriage. He sees it as her finally accepting how things are, but in truth, it’s her accepting they will never change. If she has fought for change for years, accepting it won’t change means she has left the marriage emotionally. She may continue to go through the motions while she plans her escape or waits for the kids to be older, but it’s over. And her husband doesn’t have clue. In fact, the situation may improve from his perspective because she is now just playing a part, trying to keep him content until she can cut and run. Some women do this for a decade or more, and some deserve an Emmy for their performance.

If your wife is still fighting for a better marriage but is doing so more weakly than she did in the past, you need to take drastic action IMMEDIATELY! Get help and do it now. If she won’t go with you, go alone. This is like finding out you have advanced cancer; survival is possible, but it will require drastic actions and setting pretty much everything else aside to focus on the situation.

Of course, it’s better to deal with this before it becomes critical. Your marriage is a living thing and failing to care for it has dire and long-term consequences. If your marriage hasn’t grown or improved in the last month, you have a problem. If it’s been three months, you have a disaster.

A post worth reading:

The Vine Community Chruch | Marriage & Singleness◄ Our pastor taught on 1 Cor 7 this week. Excellent sermon and a good resource for this post. (The sermon starts 51 minutes in.)

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Friday Flashback: If It Ain’t Broke …

by The Generous Husband | May 20, 2022 | Audio, Friday Flashback, Links to good stuff, Marriage Killer, Understanding Her, ZIMAGE

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So you wake up, turn on your computer, and it won’t make coffee. Naturally, you open it up and try to fix it, right? Maybe the caffeine board has gone bad? Or it could be a software problem, so you try reinstalling coffee. The truth is you are never going to get coffee out of it and you will almost certainly destroy the system if you keep trying.

I offer this word picture because I see men do this to their wives all the time. They want to fix something that isn’t broken. They want to make her into something she was never designed to be. One big way we do this is by trying to get our wife to think, feel, reason, or communicate the way we do those things. We want her to use the same words, with the same meanings, that we use. We want her to care about the same things, to the same degree, and not care about the things we don’t care about. Of course, this is asking a Windows computer to run Ubuntu software.

Your chances of changing her are the same as your chances of getting a latte out of your computer and the odds that you will hurt her in the process are high. Your attempt to change her communicates to her that there is something wrong with her, that she is broken. In reality, there is nothing wrong with her – she is simply different.

We do this with our wife’s sexuality too and, no, that doesn’t end well!

BTW – before someone links to it, this “PC that makes coffee” is fun, but it’s a latte machine in an empty computer tower case.

[This post first appeared Oct 25, 2011.]

A post worth reading:

Dr. Corey | Differences of opinion ◄ Dealing with opinions, preferences, and personal convictions.

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Her Preferences, Personality, And Past

by The Generous Husband | Apr 29, 2022 | Audio, Links to good stuff, Series, ThePast, Understanding Her, ZIMAGE

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The last few days I’ve written about how your past, your personality, and your preferences colour what your wife says and does. Of course, your wife filters what you say and do the same way. And sometimes that results in her treating you unfairly. Of course just as when you do it, she is reacting not thinking, and you pushing back just causes her to dig in her heels.

However, if you can decode what filter is in play, you can learn to approach her differently and possibly reduce or avoid the problem.

Preferences

Just because you see something as her preference doesn’t mean she sees it that way and arguing with her about it won’t help. If she does recognise it as a preference, then let her know you understand you’re asking her to move beyond her preference and be sure to thank her if she does so. Coming up against her preference is a great time to suggest a compromise.

Personality

Her personality is fairly set and asking her to go against it is asking a lot. There will be times it’s right to ask her to do that, but they should be few and you need to be clear you understand what you’re asking and why you think it’s necessary.

The Past

Her past is the difficult one. Odds are she won’t see it as being about her past and pointing out why it is won’t help in the moment. Your goal should be to know when you are going to crash into her past and work to avoid that when possible. When you can’t avoid it, do what you can to differentiate it from what happened to her in the past. And give her some space and understanding when you run up against her past.

A post worth reading:

PsyPost | Your current feelings about your relationship influence the way you remember it in the past and imagine it in future ◄ Speaking of the past…

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Stop Making Your Problem Her Problem

by The Generous Husband | Apr 7, 2022 | Audio, Big Deal Post, Change, Links to good stuff, YOU4HER, ZIMAGE

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Yesterday I gave an example of making our problem a problem for our wife. There are a great many ways men and women do this to their spouses and all of them are destructive, hurtful, and unloving.

Before I list a few examples, let me be clear that some of our “problems” are beyond our control and I’m not talking about those. If you’re colour blind, asking your wife for help discerning colours is not a problem. Any disability or inability falls into this category. You could make it a problem for her if you’re unreasonable, but expecting her to lovingly help you is neither selfish nor wrong.

Here are a few common things that men make into problems for their wives:

Anger: Anger is a choice. Some gave up the choice so long ago that they no longer have the ability to stop, but not getting help for that is also a choice. Anger hurts those around the angry person even if it’s not aimed at them.
Addictions: It’s obvious that being an alcoholic or a drug addict hurts your wife. Other things that are not classic addictions can also become a problem for your wife. Overuse of video games, excessive hunting or fishing, or too much time watching sports can all become her problem. None of these is wrong, it’s the lack of self-control that is the problem.
Always Running Late: Again, this is a choice. If you choose to be tardy all the time it is almost certainly causing problems for your wife. BTW, demanding you always arrive early for everything can also be a problem.
Your Sexual Choices: Porn use is the obvious one here, but there are others. If you have decided you will never be satisfied with sex until she does oral regularly, you have made your desire her problem. Likewise, if you expect sex daily regardless of what is happening in her life.
Failure to Parent: Your kids need a full-time mother and a full-time father. If you’re not doing your part, that’s a huge problem for your wife. And for your kids!

I could go on, but this should be enough to get you thinking. Do you have a problem that has become your wife’s problem? Better yet, if I asked your wife that question, what would she say?

A post worth reading:

The Generous Wife | Happy Camper◄ Do things she enjoys!

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