Straight Talk to Men by James Dobson

Author:James Dobson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Men
ISBN: 9781414355955
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2014-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

A MAN AND HIS WIFE

Ten

A MAN AND HIS WIFE

We turn our attention now to the relationship between husbands and wives, which reminds me of a telephone call I received recently from a man who had read my previous book The Strong-Willed Child. It did not answer his questions. Furthermore, he said he had read my earlier book What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women, and it didn’t satisfy his needs, either.

“What I want you to write,” he continued, “is a combination of those two books on the subject ‘How to Live with a Strong-Willed Woman’!”

I told him I wouldn’t touch that topic with a shovel, yet here I am about to wade into an equally volatile matter. I want to discuss the characteristic of women that men complain about most, and vice versa. In fact, I plan to speak more bluntly in this chapter than in any statement on the subject I’ve ever written. That should be enough to win me some enemies among both sexes, but the time has come for straight talk to husbands and wives.

Perhaps you know that the divorce rate in America is now higher than in any other civilized nation in the world. That is tragic. Even more distressing to me is knowledge that the divorce rate for Christians is only slightly lower than for the population at large. How could that possibly be true? Jesus taught his followers to be loving, giving, moral, responsible, self-disciplined, honest, and respectful. He also explicitly prohibited divorce except for radical circumstances of infidelity. With these instructions, He provided an unshakable foundation for a stable and loving relationship between husband and wife. How can it be, then, that those who claim to have accepted Jesus’ teaching and devoted their lives to Christian principles are hardly more successful in maintaining harmonious families than those who profess nothing? There’s an enormous contradiction tucked within those words. As Howard Hendricks said, “If your Christianity doesn’t work at home, it doesn’t work. Don’t export it!”

The truth is, the same circumstances that destroy non-Christian marriages can also be deadly in the homes of believers. I’m not referring to alcoholism or infidelity or compulsive gambling. The most common marriage killer is much more subtle and insidious. Let me explain.

Suppose I have a counseling appointment at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon with a person whom I’ve never met. Who is that person and what will be the complaint that brings him or her to me? First, the counselee will probably be Mrs. Jones, not her husband. A man is seldom first to seek marriage counseling, and when he does, it is for a different motive than his wife seeks it. She comes because her marriage is driving her crazy. He comes because his wife is driving him crazy.

Mrs. Jones will be, perhaps, between twenty-eight and forty-two years of age, and her problem will be extremely familiar to me. Though the details will vary, the frustration she communicates on that afternoon will conform to a well-worn pattern. It will sound something like this.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.