The past week has been one of the best of our marriage.

For people who haven’t read the books, I highly recommend them. But please approach them with an open and humble heart, and be ready to confront some things that you’d rather not think about. And pray!

Everyone comes at things from a different perspective, and mine is definitely different than yours.

Personally, if a woman who has a husband who is even willing to read this book? You’re most likely a lot better off than you realize.

You’ve made an excellent point. Obviously this book isn’t for you.

People like me get to work with the outcomes: Divorce, broken families, affairs, addictions.

Oh, come on. You’re saying that divorces and addictions are caused by expecting folks to realize their blessings and not expecting their spouse to meet every need possible?

Like I said, too much time on someone’s hands.

What about when Christ says to serve? To sacrifice? Speaking relationally, how about the least being first?

Screaming my needs, my needs does not seem to come into play there.

I guess where I am coming from is that I work with all women, and the things they say about their husbands are ridiculous. The things they get angry and hurt about are trivial. There are a lot of women who feel the need to be insulted about pretty much anything.

I feel sorry for these poor guys who are working hard to take care of their families and are made to be miserable over this stuff.

Lots of men and women take that approach with their spouses and their kids.

People like me get to work with the outcomes: Divorce, broken families, affairs, addictions.

I’m not validating selfishness. I’m validating what God made us to be: relational creatures. Love. Respect. Listening. Value. These are parts of the imago dei. They aren’t to become so important that other things don’t matter, but I can tell you without a doubt that if I feel my wife doesn’t respect me, it’s a problem. A real problem and a problem that stops me in much that I am called to do.

Love one another as I have loved you, Jesus said. Love your wife as I have loved you. These are relational and they are descriptive of what it means to be human, where feeling unloved is hell.

Okay, but how much of that not being able to cope comes from unrealistic expectations?

The fact that our basic needs are met, and we don’t have to worry about, you know, survival, gives us too much time on our hands to drum up insignificant “he doesn’t validate me” problems.

I am, again, not addressing the book but the comments.

If our approach is going to be, “Women in the Sudan manage to survive without much respect because they are fighting for life,” we’ve really just articulated Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, i.e. a person who needs bread isn’t worried about does my husband listen. That’s a good point. But the divorce rate in the church is largely a matter of marriages that can’t cope or repair themselves, not a matter of adultery, etc.

I appreciate your point that Americans are a bit self-consumed, but ask any missionary agency why missionary families must come home, and marriage trouble will be high on the list.

The issues in this book are simply human ones, and are worth our consideration.