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FF: Applying the S-Curve Model to Strengthen Your Marriage

by The Generous Husband | Feb 21, 2025 | Change, Friday Flashback, Seeing Clearly, YOU4HER

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Whitney Johnson, a Harvard Business Review blogger, has some interesting ideas I think apply to marriage nicely. In Throw Your Life a Curve Johnson talks about the S curve model for understanding how we learn new things.

You start to do something new to improve some aspect of your marriage, or just to make your wife happier. This could be a change of habit, trying to listen better, a new approach to sex, whatever. You start at the lower left of the curve, in the yellow area of the chart above. You are unsure how it’s going to work or exactly what to do. After you struggle for a while, you get the hang of it, and you start to improve rapidly. You get positive feedback from your bride because she is seeing the rapid change; this is the green area. Finally, you have almost mastered what you’re doing, which means there’s not much room to grow or improve. Your wife may stop bragging on you; you may start doing whatever out of habit without much thought, or you may get bored with it. This is the red area.

Each phase has dangers:

YELLOW: The danger here is giving up. This is the most frustrating part of doing something new. There is little growth, plenty of failure, and little or no recognition of what you’re trying to do. The important thing here is to just keep going.
GREEN: The greatest danger here is getting a big head. Don’t let your success or her praise cause you to slack off here or in other areas. You need to add this to the other ways you meet her wants and needs. Another danger is thinking that you’re owed something (see Say no to Quid Pro Quo).
RED: One danger here is backing off just before you master whatever it is you’re doing. Another danger is slipping into autopilot, which means you won’t do as good a job. You might also get so bored you stop doing it, do it less often, or don’t keep doing it as well.

Do you see any of this in your past when you tried to improve your marriage? Do you tend to drop out in the yellow zone? Do you think too much of yourself in the green zone, or think she owes you? Do you get to the red zone and drop what you are doing to start a new curve?

[This post first appeared Nov 29, 2012.]

Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly
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When Hyper-Spirituality Threatens Your Marriage

by The Generous Husband | Jan 21, 2025 | Marriage Killer

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From time to time, I see or work with a man on the verge of his wife filing for divorce, who responds by becoming hyper-spiritual. He proclaims that her actions and choices are due to either his wife falling away from the Lord, or demonic activity, or both.

In some cases, this is just an escalation of how he has been for a long time. Other times, the man becomes this way when he realises his wife is thinking of getting out.

I’m all for being spiritual, but hyper-spirituality is something else. The man starts gossiping about his wife in the name of seeking prayer. He may pray for his wife, but he also judges her.

There are two problems.

First, these guys never show any grace for their wife. I’m sure they could tell you why her sins mean she doesn’t deserve grace, but that’s just justification. And it violates the message of the gospel.

The second problem is these men are so focused on all the things she is doing wrong, they don’t look at what they are doing wrong. And usually when men go down this path, there is a lot of wrong treatment of their wife in their past. They think they have dealt with it and God has forgiven them, so they see it as a non issue. But even if he has changed, expecting his wife to forgive him and turn on a dime is silly.

If you see yourself in what I have described, please know your actions are driving your wife away. I’ve never seen this work out for a man, and I’ve seen it end marriages that might have been saved.

If you’re not giving grace and forgiveness at every turn, you are not treating your wife as Jesus would have you treat her.

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Tailoring Marriage Advice: Your Wife’s Unique Needs

by The Generous Husband | Jan 2, 2025 | Understanding Her

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I’ve been asked if I do in my marriage everything I suggest here.

I do not.

And I do not, for the same reason you shouldn’t do everything I suggest: our wives are unique individuals.

My wife is uber-practical. So when I got her a vacuum cleaner for Christmas one year, she was thrilled. But most women would not be pleased with an appliance for Christmas.
My wife is not particularly moved by romance. So I don’t do a lot of that, and carefully pick and choose for best effect.
My wife is an introvert. She enjoys going out with me, but adding a date night to a week when she’s out of the house multiple times is not going to bless her.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Some of what I suggest isn’t good for Lori, and other things need to be tweaked to be a good fit.

Know your wife, and apply what I and others say with that in mind.

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FF: 4 Words You Should Never Use With your Wife

by The Generous Husband | Dec 6, 2024 | Communication, Friday Flashback, Good Marriage, Understanding Her

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First, a confession, I have no idea what four words you should never say to or in front of your wife. What’s more, the list is probably larger than four. However, I can help you narrow down the list by giving you four common problems areas.

Painful family words: Never use words her family used to shame, tease, or control her. This could be something like “stupid” or a nickname she hated. I don’t mean a loving name she was okay with; I’m talking about mean ones, or ones that felt mean to her. These words have deep, painful roots, and nothing good comes from you tugging at those.
Painful childhood words: Much like the above, but from school and other places she interacted with other kids when she was growing up. Kids can be exceptionally cruel, and even friends can be hurtful by teasing past what is fun.
Painful sex words: Some women don’t care what words you use for sex, while others are very sensitive to anything she wouldn’t hear in a doctor’s office. A great many women have a rather violent internal reaction to a certain word starting with “c”. And many are not a fan of the words “moist” and “panties”. Whatever her no go sex words, using them is making things worse for you, both in and out of bed.
Sarcasm and insults: Unless she grew up the only girl with several bothers, odds are she doesn’t enjoy sarcasm and teasing insults the way your buddies do. Save it for the guys, and treat her differently.

All of these are personal and vary from woman to woman. A word that offends one woman is a loving nickname to another; a word that means “I like you” to one woman is a deep insult to another. If you’ve been paying attention, you should have some idea what words bother her. Of course, you could also just ask her. Give her the categories above as a guide, or ask her for a list of a few words she would like to never hear from your mouth.

[This post first appeared Oct , 2012.]

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Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly
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Knowledge vs. Experience in Marriage: Practical Application Matters

by The Generous Husband | Sep 19, 2024 | Good Marriage

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Lori and I regularly watch Living Traditions Homestead on YouTube. Aside from giving us information we can use, they are a lovely Christian couple who love each other and have a plan. In a recent video, they were talking abut the difference between knowledge and experience. If you watch hundreds of videos on gardening or raising animals, you have a lot of knowledge. But when you try to put that knowledge to work, you find out that knowing is not enough. Practical experience is necessary to do gardening or raising chickens well. You can only get experience by doing. And by making mistakes.

Marriage is the same way. You can read all the books and follow all the blogs, and have a great deal of knowledge. But you will have to apply that knowledge to get practical experience. And there will be mistakes.

One great way to get experience is by doing something new with someone who knows how to do it. That is true for gardening or marriage. This is why I suggest getting together with a couple who seem to have their marriage working well. It’s also why coaching can be helpful.

I’m all for chasing knowledge, but that’s not enough. Even if you’ve been married for years and have a great thing going, there will be times when something new comes up. A book and some trial and error might be all you need, but it takes work, and there will be things that don’t work.

Understanding Your Wife’s Top Priorities

by The Generous Husband | Feb 13, 2024 | Audio, Do It For Her, Her Needs, ZIMAGE

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So imagine with me that your wife was perfect in almost every way. She did what you would like, when and how you would like. And she did that everywhere except the bedroom. Perfect in every other way, but sex was rare, and poor when it happened.

Would you be all about all the ways she is so perfect, or would you be upset about your horrible sex life?

Your wife is the same way, but her priorities are different. If you do all kinds of things really well but fail to do the things she most wants, she will feel as you would if she were good at everything except sex.

The tricky part is most women don’t have one thing that matters as much as sex matters to most men. What’s more, every woman is different. But there are a couple of things that really matter to her, and if you get those right, she will be thrilled.

So how do you figure out what her couple of things are? Watch her. Ask her. Ask her friends. Or just go with trial and error and listen for feedback.

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When You Just KNOW it Can Be Better

by The Generous Husband | Feb 9, 2024 | Audio, Big Deal Post, Good Marriage, ZIMAGE

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Recently, in the comments, someone asked me about my motivation to make changes that lead to improving my marriage. That’s an interesting story…

I grew up with parents who loved each other, didn’t fight, stayed together, and had a better than average marriage. However, it wasn’t a great marriage. Honestly, I can’t say I ever saw a great marriage growing up, but I was convinced there was something far better than I had ever seen. I didn’t believe it, I knew it. I knew it beyond any doubt, and I was determined to do whatever it took to have that kind of marriage. I married a lady who didn’t share my confidence in what could be, but did share my drive to do everything possible to make it as good as possible. It wasn’t easy, but it was certainly worth it! Today we have a fantastic marriage, and it just keeps getting better.

Why was I so sure a couple could have an awesome marriage when I’d never seen it? I can only blame God; I think He put it in my heart. When and how it happened I can’t say, but I certainly knew it by the age of eighteen. As for why God put it in my heart, I think it was about more than Lori and I having a good marriage. It’s no small part of why I do what I do here and in other places around the Interweb.

My encouragement to you is this: when it comes to marriage, there’s more than you’ve seen, and more than you’ve been told. It’s not easy, but you can have an incredible marriage, and it’s well worth the effort. I pray the Lord will put the truth deep in your heart and give you the faith to seek it. In the Old Testament, the Lord likens His relationship with His chosen people to that of husband and wife. Jesus calls the Church His bride. Paul also speaks of marriage as an earthy example of what we will have with God. I realise all analogies eventually fail, but surely, God intended human marriages to be a far better example of what we have with Him than most of what we see today.

[This post first appeared July 29, 2012.]

Friday Flashback: Examine the Roots of Your Marriage Expectations

by The Generous Husband | Nov 10, 2023 | Audio, Friday Flashback, Seeing Clearly, ThePast, ZIMAGE

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What do you want from your marriage? How do you want your marriage to be? Why do you want what you want? What is the root of your desires?

If your desires for your marriage come out of brokenness or fear, your desires can’t be completely healthy.

If there was a lot of conflict in your home when you were growing up, and you are desperate to avoid conflict in your marriage; you might rule with an iron fist, give in to anything your wife wants, or run from any hint of conflict.
If your mother didn’t respect your father, you may be hypersensitive about respect and see disrespect where there is none.
If your father treated your mother badly you may be so afraid of being the same way that you abdicate your duty as husband.
If your family didn’t spend much time together, you may enforce an unhealthy level of “togetherness”.
If your mother was controlling, you may see your wife as controlling when she is not, and you may reject acceptable and necessary questions as an invasion of privacy or a lack of trust.
If you’re afraid your wife will leave you (especially if you think you do not deserve her, and fear she will figure it out) you may do all manner of crazy things.

In general, why you want things is an important question to ask yourself. It is also often a very good way of finding unreasonable desires or expectations.

[This post first appeared July 5, 2012.]

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