This is Lesson 13, Section III from Wife School Online.
Many women are disappointed with the fact that their husbands don’t know how to love them in a language that they (the wife) can hear. Many women do not understand that a husband has to be taught to love you, just like a four-year-old has to be taught to read. He does not come into the marriage understanding your longing for intimacy, tenderness, deep sharing, and romance. He does not understand your desire to feel his appreciation for your unique gifts and beauty. We have to remember that there is an order in teaching him how to love you. Just like you don’t learn algebra until you understand multiplication and fractions first, you can’t teach a husband to love you until you first understand his needs and fill his tank with the 8 A’s.
This order of the woman going first seems to be where women get hung up. God made women to be the influencers and He decreed that “wise women build their homes and foolish women tear theirs down”. This is the way God created the marriage, with the woman being the influencer. Wise women know the tides are coming in and that they cannot change nature, only adapt to universal truths. Demanding that the relationship is 50/50 may sound right, but you will constantly be disappointed since he has no clue what your 50 looks like.
Your husband is wildly different from you and you must repeatedly remind yourself that he wants different things than you do. What is important to him is not the same as what is important to you. This man thinks about his job, money, and sex. You think about your children, your home, your health (weight/looks), relationships, emotional intimacy and closeness, and the list of what you have to do. Women expect to come into the marriage and have both spouses give the same effort toward the things that she wants. She doesn’t realize that he basically doesn’t care about many of the things on her list. So after the initial hormones of the engagement die down, she realizes that she is married to a man who does not think about or care about what she does—at all! Why, he is interested in his own goals, not hers!
What a disappointment marriage is now! Why, she thought there would be roses, candlelight, and deep sharing in which she would feel like the most beautiful, adored woman on the planet. He, on the other hand, thought there would be sex and someone to applaud him while he made his mark on the world. Oh dear, oh dear.
Once we accept and understand a man, that he is wired radically different, we can begin to minister to this creature. As we progress in Wife School, we understand that our husband needs constant encouragement about who he is. He also needs recurring, engaging sex, and he needs a deep understanding from you of the struggles and pressures he faces daily with his job/calling. As women, we are engineered to perfectly supply these needs. We listen deeply, admire, appreciate, and soothe. When the beast comes out in the husband, we step it up, and soothe even more. The comfort and faithfulness we exhibit to our husbands is like a deep healing balm to a wound. How a man longs for a woman who refuses to see him through his failures, but insists on seeing him through his virtues. This man’s soul is attached to the soul of his wife.
Women are full of emotional tension, just like men are full of sexual tension. Much of her emotional tension is a negative tension toward her husband because he does not “love her well” and “he does not understand her”.
If a newlywed wife understood her husband, and then won his heart by meeting his needs, and then gave him a pass on “knowing her” until she has an opportunity to teach him (years needed!), then marriage in Christianity would turn around. When the wife has the husband’s heart open to her, she gently influences it, not demanding that things change today. He is learning Chinese (how to love a wife) and it will take a few years.
After his needs are met, a man’s shield falls off his heart. He begins to trust you and to want to please you. Then you slowly ask for your legitimate needs in a sweet way. I’m sure there are some hard-hearted, thick-brained men who don’t respond to this, but I have never seen one. Men respond to this, as plants respond to sunlight, good soil, and water. But most women don’t want to pay the price of persevering. They want to unleash their “emotional tension” and they want to feel loved today.
I am getting email after email of husbands turning and opening to their wives’ hearts as husbands begin to feel admired and their 8 A’s are met. If your husband is still not responding, then stop and think if you are still bringing emotional turmoil into his life. Are you meeting his 8 A’s? Do you have a gentle and quiet spirit that God has bathed with Himself, so that it is a calming influence, instead of a stirring and disruptive influence? God made woman to be the influencer and if she wisely builds her home, she will reap the benefits.
As I repeatedly say, men don’t usually come into the marriage knowing what women want. You have to win the right to be heard, and that is by your gentle and quiet spirit and the 8 A’s. You will have to teach him to love you in a language you can hear. But that is after, after, after, his tank is full.
What power you have. What influence you wield. But it’s not in demanding or blasting him with his inadequacies. It’s in your kindness, your comfort, and your goodness.
If you don’t feel loved by your husband, back up, re-organize, get your needs met in the Lord, meet his needs, and when his tank is full, ask for the top one or two things you want/need. I know there’s a list of thirty, but ask for the top one or two things. Praise him to the hilltop when you see any evidence of him responding. And live like this for years. Know that he will not get it the first, second, or even third attempts in which you try to explain things to him. Really, maybe not even after the first twenty attempts by you. But eventually, a man with his soul needs met, will respond to his wife. Mark this down: you won’t even recognize a man in five years as the same man if he has had the 8 A’s poured into him by a loving and sweet wife. It is quite the miracle. Love never fails. Men are created to want to please their wives. However, wives have not understood the playbook.
Word pictures (chapter 13 in Wife School) are magnificent for explaining foreign concepts to husbands. Use them wisely, but sparingly.
11 Responses to If You Don’t Feel Loved By Your Husband
I’ve been wondering why my marriage isn’t working. Beating myself over the head. Wasting 8 years of marriage in misery. I don’t want to try this. I don’t want to go first. Why oh why do I have to be the initiater. This in itself is a hard task and seems almost imossible. What if it doesn’t work? What if we have to many issues to work on? Lord help me. I will try. To save my marriage. To experience the love I desire from my husband. Lead me Holy Spirit.
First are you willing to do what it take to get your marrige In connection with God. The Bible say Eve initiated Adam to bite the Apple so he did. It started before our time, and was in a bad way. To want a bless, and awesome marriage you should teach him the things you like and want in your that’s gonna make you him Happy, one SEX so that’s something you both like being affectionate keep the fire burning,. The same thing it took to get him keep doing it just add some more fire to it. If you let the fire go out now you are making you Marriage Ugly. Learn your husband heart , and add your heart to his as a spice you should Have bought life into your marriage. I hope I was a help by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Love you be Bless SSS!!!😇😍😇
I really needed to read this this morning, I question our marriage, why does he ignore me,why don’t he tell me he loves me back,just a bunch of why’s and never no answer, he has n nothing to say to me at all..do I continue with the marriage and feel alone, hurt and not loved by him,do I continue to just feel like a room mate and not a wife?
I too feel like a roommate. My husband doesn’t seem to get me nor I him. We had a rough start to our relationship so I don’t know why I’m surprised but nevertheless I feel so drained by him and just annoyed by some of his habits. We never have any sex and when we do it’s not that great. He never touches me so when he does I get mad for some reason.(?) I try to do what he wants in that area but it’s just not good for me. He has so many annoying habits and they really try my nerves. I’m not sure if this will work but I have tried to love him and be the mate that lifts him up and fills his tank with encouragement and love but I feel so drained and with 2 kids it’s just really hard to love him. He has put me down so much over the years and with his drinking has took a huge toll on me. We have been through a lot of turmoil and you would think it would bring us closer but I never felt like he was on my side through all of it. I just wish he was someone I can talk to about anything or how I feel without feeling judged or have it backlash on me(ex. I can’t believe you think____. You must think___ because you said ____ before.) He just stopped drinking but I still have my guard up and am, I guess waiting for him to say another hurtful thing, something uncaring, or yell at me or to be just quick to get angry. I feel like I’m running a race with no energy. 😥
What are the 8 A’s?
Hi Kristal,
The 8 A’s are the basic principles of Wife School, Julie’s first book intended to help women learns the secrets to grow a soul-stirring marriage. This book is available on Amazon.com.
Jessica (Julie’s Tech Assistant)
What is the name of the book that has the 8 A’s.
Hi Martha,
The 8 A’s are the basic principles of Wife School, Julie’s first book intended to help women learns the secrets to grow a soul-stirring marriage. This book is available on Amazon.
Jessica (Julie’s Tech Assistant)
In 21 years of marriage I am beginning to wonder if we can even survive as a couple anymore. My spouse and I are so disconnected. There has been major changes in our lives that has contributed to the bitterness and anger that I am consumed with but not for anything that he has done. I do put a lot of blame on him for not being more of an emotional supporter for me and because of this I don’t feel emotionally attached to him anymore. My spouse just doesn’t quite understand how I feel and it doesn’t seem that important to him. I don’t even feel attached when we are intimate; something I try to avoid, but feel obligated to do so. I tell him all the time that I believe we need to spend more time together for I think this may help rekindle what is left; if perhaps there is anything left. I am having a hard time determining what it is like to be in love with him for I have been feeling a separation between us for so long that I just don’t know that feeling anymore. I want to throw in the towel most days and find myself pushing him away more and more. I just don’t know what to do and if it is even worth putting forth the energy to fight for this marriage.
I have been married 3 months both of us are 60 years old. He tells me how much he loves me and most of the time I can see that he probably does but there is atleast 1 day every week where he seems to have no use for me, He is distant, silent and not affectonate at all. I find it impossible to handle this change in his behavior but when I try to talk to him about it I get Know where. He is a very good man. I guess I need to mention that we are both Pastors and very close to God. We pray together twice daily and study the word. Our sexual relationship is very good but I cant help but be concerned if this is happening once a week after 3 months of marriage what will it be like in a year. We do not have years to work on this problem at our age. Help
I had a traumatic experience while dating my husband. His adult children were never fond of me, but one day he allowed them to disrespect me and hurt me by allowing them to tell me all the reasons why they hated me. All the while he watched and said nothing. I left him, but he begged me to come back. He reassured me that he loved me and that he was sorry. We later married. I believed that by marrying, our bond to each other would grow stronger. Through the years, there there has been a continued undercurrent of divide between his adult children, my husband and myself. I struggled with this for years and tried to make him understand the pain I was feeling and how it was hurting us as a couple. I never wanted to ruin his relationship with his children and encouraged him to spend time with them. But he couldn’t accept that my relationship with them wasn’t healthy.
We recently began seeing a counselor together and, during those sessions, I was able to openly express all of the pain I suffered and how I felt unloved and disrespected by him. After all of these years, I believe he finally understands.
These raw feelings are out in the open now. I feel angry and hurt. How do I come to a place of forgiveness. It is the right thing to do and it is what God wants of me, but I haven’t been able to reach it. I believe God can help us heal, but he does not have nor want a relationship with God.