3 Small Things Wives Need From Their Husbands, Not Their Girlfriends
Thephotographer209 | Pexels A lot of spouses like to pay lip service to the idea of being in a 'conscious relationship,' but when push comes to shove, many husbands aren't interested in truly doing their work. Being conscious, or awake, in your relationship really comes down to being responsible for your mind and intentional in how you love your wife.
It's easy to put in no effort, watch a relationship deteriorate, and then blame the divorce rate or whatever lazy excuse is floating around. What takes real work, according to research, is putting in effort every day to love them as they've never been loved before. If you want to slide the fader into the more conscious side of the spectrum, here are three things wives need from their husbands, not their girlfriends.
Here are 3 small things wives need from their husbands, not their girlfriends:
1. For you to actually say what you want
What are the most significant needs you have that you predominantly (or exclusively) want to have met in your intimate relationship? Perhaps you care a lot about playfulness. Or deep, stimulating conversation. Whatever they are, you must first come to know yourself well enough to be aware of these needs, and then have the courage to explicitly name them to your partner.
Couples need at least one uninterrupted conversation a day, no kids, no phones, no half-listening from the couch. As marriage expert Dave Willis explained, "Communication does for a marriage what breathing does for your lungs." But that only works if both people are actually willing to name what they need instead of waiting for their partner to guess.
If blurting your needs out at random times is too much for you, have a structured empty-the-bucket clearing exercise where you both respond to the question, “What else can I do for you to help you feel more loved?” for 5-10 minutes straight. When the first partner is finished, the other person goes, until you both feel complete.
2. For you to tell the truth
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An intimate relationship only has the opportunity to thrive if both parties are willing to be honest. And not just be honest when it’s easy, but also be honest when it’s most difficult to do so.
Now, obviously, honesty has to be balanced with a sense of compassion. You don’t want to spit harsh truths when your covert intention is to hurt your partner. However, the societal default is for people to be too passive and half-hearted when it comes to relationship communication.
Intent matters. You can say “I love you” or “I’ll never leave you” with a malicious, manipulative intent. And you can also say “You’ve been gaining weight lately” or “I don’t feel connected to you lately” from a place of love and tenderness.
But if you and/or your partner are constantly biting your tongue and letting your quiet resentments build, your connection won’t have a snowball's chance of surviving long term. If something gathers enough steam in your mind that it starts to create a small divide between you and your partner, then it is worth talking about. And talking about it fully, honestly, and with your heart open.
3. For you to put in consistent effort
An intimate relationship is like a garden that you and your partner water, landscape, and put energy into. If you both consistently put energy into your garden, then it will grow beautiful flowers that you can admire, and fruits and vegetables that you can receive sustenance from. But if you both take energy from the garden without ever adding to it, then eventually the garden will become depleted and barren.
Relationship quality naturally declines over time, not because people fall out of love, but because they stop investing the same energy they did at the start. Research on over 11,000 participants showed that the effort people put into their relationship, things like time, attention, and emotional energy, was one of the strongest predictors of lasting commitment.
“It just wasn’t the right garden for me. I want a garden that doesn’t need any watering and that I can marvel at and pull energy from all day, every day”, says the perpetual victim, continuing the search out there for a garden that requires no maintenance or effort. An intimate relationship (like a well-maintained garden) throws off many gifts. It can give you nourishment in the most challenging phases of your life. But it requires energy from you.
In any partnership, there are three entities: you, me, and the relationship. In a co-dependent bond, the people involved see only the relationship. In a partnership of intimacy-averse avoidants, it’s hard for them to see anything but ‘you and me.’
But a true, healthy partnership contains all three elements at all times. You know where you end. You know where they begin. And you are both aware of and actively tending to the garden that you both invest energy into.
This is the same with all major elements of life. Your health requires constant effort. So does your business/your career. So do your friendships. So does raising children. Anything worth having in life is worth fighting for, and worth investing energy into.
Even if all you do to incorporate this point is, once per quarter, you explicitly ask your partner, “What can I do to love you better?” and then truly listen (and act on what they tell you), you will already be leagues ahead of 99 percent of people.
Jordan Gray is a five-time Amazon best-selling author, public speaker, and relationship coach with more than a decade of practice. His work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Women's Health, and The Good Men Project, among countless others.
