Scripture teaches that the husband is the spiritual head of the home, but our culture often takes a different view. I think that we owe it to our men to figure out what makes us happy.” Secret #3: Your husband was designed by God to be the leader of your family.Īnother problem in many marriages, Shannon says, is that women have usurped their husband’s role as the family’s leader. When she’s not happy, then he must be failing. “He feels like he is the source of her happiness. “It’s important for women to realize that for a man to be in a marriage where his wife isn’t happy, that has to be the most crushing thing in the world,” Shannon says. Greater than their need for respect, or even for sex, is their need to see their wives be happy. That wasn’t fair.”Īnother need that men have, she says, may surprise many women. “Yet, with my husband, somehow I expected him to be exempt from that need and just be the target of my wrath. “At work and even with my kids I tried to speak so nice and so kind,” Shannon says. This was one source of the contention in her own marriage, she says. Women need to realize, Shannon says, that if they were to speak to their best friends they way they often speak to their husbands, they wouldn’t have those friends for very long. “It would start to send me to my little quiet place where I stopped communicating.” “For me it didn’t take too many negative, spiteful words thrown into a conversation that would start to freeze me up” Greg says. This approach makes most husbands pull away because they do not feel respected, a significant emotional need for men. Often, when women feel that their husbands are not meeting their needs, they can become hurtful and unkind toward him. It is also important, the couple says, to realize that women are not the only ones with emotional needs. Secret #2: Your husband has emotional needs that are just as important as your own needs. She encourages other women to do the same.
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Through the help of a counselor, Shannon was able to find healing for past hurts and learn how to let God meet her emotional needs. That’s something only God can do for us.” “No human being can do that for another human being. “Every man on the planet will cave under that pressure,” Shannon says.
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Too many times, she says, women expect their husbands to first figure out what all of their needs are, and then meet them on their own. As is often the case in marriages, she was placing a huge burden on her husband. His response may seem harsh, but it was exactly what Shannon needed to hear. Until you look to God to satisfy your emotional needs there’s nothing that I or any other man on the planet can do to satisfy you.” His reply? “Shannon, you have a Grand Canyon of emotional needs and even if every man in Dallas lined up outside your doorstep, it wouldn’t be enough. The couple had reached their breaking point when Shannon one day proclaimed to Greg, “You just don’t meet my emotional needs!” “It makes me shudder to think back to that season,” Shannon says, “because I was honestly thinking of leaving him and my two very young children.” After seven years of marriage, Shannon was extremely unhappy.
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Shannon and Greg, who have been married for 16 years, experienced this in their own marriage. When he can’t possibly meet her expectations, he feels like a failure and distances himself from her. Many times, the authors say, a husband will pull away from his wife because she puts too many demands on him to meet all of her needs. Secret #1: Your husband cannot meet all of your emotional needs.
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Recognizing these patterns can help wives figure out what steps to take to reignite the passion in their relationship. In their new book, Every Woman’s Marriage, Shannon and her husband Greg discuss the common problems that cause husbands to grow cold in a marriage. It is not that love has died between them it is just that the husband has shut down emotionally because of how his wife treats him. Sometimes, she says, it is the women’s attitudes or behaviors that have caused the men to become frigid. Perhaps, says author and counselor Shannon Ethridge, women share part of the blame when their husbands pull away from them emotionally. Often, when the flames of love are growing dim at home women tend to blame their husbands for becoming cold and distant. Even for troubled marriages, it will take work, but it is possible to breathe new life into a relationship that has grown listless. Whether your marriage is currently the best it has ever been, or it is in need of repair, the Ethridges suggest that these principles will improve your relationship. You can have the marriage that you have always dreamed of! Authors Greg and Shannon Ethridge have a message for women.