Why Won’t My Husband Lead?

Dave Wilson has always been a confident, take charge kind of guy. But early on, leading his family spiritually, that was intimidating for him. I felt like I could lead in other areas of my life better than I could lead my wife spiritually or my kids spiritually. Part of it was I was trained, you know, as an athlete, so I could walk on a field and feel confident. I got a degree. I went to seminary. I have an understanding. I'm not saying I'm great, but I can preach. I know how to lead a church. I know how to cast vision.

And then I walk in my back door and I felt a paralysis, like I don't know what to do. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You'll find us online at familylifetoday.com. What should a man do if he feels inadequate to lead his family spiritually?

And is there anything his wife can do to encourage him? We'll talk more about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I would imagine as you talk to wives about... Bob, I don't talk to wives. No, I'm talking to your wife. Oh, good. Talking to Anne. Just making sure. If you're talking to wives about frustrations in marriage, about the things that they wrestle with, the things they wish could be fixed or could be different, could be better, what we're going to talk about today is probably, if it's not at the top of the list, it's top three, don't you think? I think so. And after 30 years, I'm amazed that this still rises to the top of issues that women are so frustrated with and are looking for answers.

Please tell me this doesn't have to do with watching football. We're not going there today. Well, you know, in a way it could.

It could. It depends on what's going on in a guy's life because the issue is a wife's frustration when a husband is failing to initiate, to take the lead, to lead the relationship, specifically to lead it spiritually, but it can just be his failure to lead in general, to be passive, right? I sat down with a woman a couple weeks ago and she said, I'm thinking of filing for divorce. And I said, tell me what's going on.

She said, I'm married to a good man. He's a good father, but he is the most passive man I've ever met. He doesn't lead spiritually at all. He never wants to initiate anything. I'm always leading the family.

And when I hear biblically what this should look like, it doesn't look like it should. And I'm the one always leading. What should I do? And she's thinking what I should do is I should bail. She's thinking there must be someone else out there that would do a better job. So the level of discontentedness that comes from a husband's failure to lead spiritually, to lead in general, is something that it's not just an annoyance. This goes to the heart of what we long for in a marriage relationship. And I don't think all women are to that point of saying I might file for divorce, but I think they're lost in thinking, what do I do?

Can I do anything besides pray for my husband? So I'm here with two experts. No, I was just thinking the opposite. I was thinking, okay, honey, Bob and I are sitting here with a wife.

No, no, no, no. We're not turning it on me. I'm saying, guys, help us to know how to respond.

Okay, here's my first question then. What do women want? What does that wife want? What do you want from your man in the area of leading spiritually? Well, I think as women, we hear what it looks like to be a spiritual leader. So maybe that involves initiating prayer with our family or some sort of dialogue about God with our kids or initiating saying, hey, kids, hey, honey, let's get ready and go to church instead of a wife saying, are we going to church today? Are you going to go with me?

Are you going to go with the kids? Someone who's modeling their pursuit of Jesus. Now, you've acknowledged that you had kind of an idealized vision of what that was supposed to look like when you first got married. Oh, yes, she did. You thought Saint Dave was going to do it a particular way. And you had to do some correction to your thinking because your expectations were, I mean, we talk about Saint Dave, somebody would have to be a saint in order to live up to what were your expectations. And I think we do that as women. We have a picture of what godly men are doing in their homes.

Mine was Dennis Rainey. Dennis would talk and I thought, Dennis is leading his family every day in prayer, reading the scriptures. He's calling them together and they're all sitting at his feet saying, Dad, teach us. And so, I was hoping Dave would initiate that at least some sort of a time with Jesus as a family. Is that not a realistic expectation? Well, I mean, first you've got to go back and say, is that really what happened in the Rainey household? And the answer is no. And I'm not saying it was bad, but it wasn't bad.

And so, I think a lot of wives do what you did. It's like they glorify or they actually create an unrealistic view. They see it. It's not even real. Same thing they do with I'm going to marry Prince Charming.

You know, sort of this glamorized thing. And so, I think you have to go down and say, okay, well, what should it look like? But then, as the man, you've got to ask, okay, why am I not leading? So, with your wife who's thinking, my husband is spiritually passive, he never does anything, maybe the first place to start in your conversation with her is, what is the expectation?

Is that a realistic expectation? And are you expecting him to be more than most men are capable of being? Which is not to say that a guy shouldn't step up and do something, and maybe this guy's doing nothing. But I do think some wives need to have their glorified image adjusted before we get in and start talking about how the man needs to get in shape, right? I think that's true. Yeah, and I think it's really easy, and we all do this when you look at a family or a pastor or a radio host like Bob Lapine.

I think it's really easy when you see them on the screen or you listen to them to create an image that's not even real. You know, I mean, people literally at our church, because Anne and I often would together speak on marriage, and we'd share our weaknesses and share struggles. And we'd see them later in the lobby, and they're like, yeah, we know it's really not as bad as you sounded. We're like, no, it's worse.

What do you mean? And they're like, there's just no way that you really struggle like you said, because you're Dave and Anne. And it's like, wow, they don't really think the struggle's that real. It's that real. And so I think you're right.

It's got to bring it down a little bit. It probably didn't look like that in a rainy household. It doesn't look like that in the Wilson household. But what is realistic, and what could it, should it look like? I remember a conversation we had a number of years ago with Elizabeth Elliott when she was still alive. And she used an illustration I've never forgotten. She said, if you walk up and there's a guy who's got on a plain white shirt, a business shirt, dress shirt, but he's had an ink pen in his pocket, and that ink pen has leaked, and there is a quarter-size purple spot at the bottom of his pocket. She says, where do your eyes go and what do you focus on? And you focus on the spot that's there.

And she said, now how much of the shirt is still white? Most of the shirt, 99 percent, but your eyes keep getting drawn to the flaw, to what is wrong. I think that's another part of this equation where husbands or wives can become so fixated on the flaws that we see in our spouses that we fail to remember and to recognize the good things that we've come to take for granted.

I think you're right, Bob. We can focus on the weaknesses. We see the things that need to change. We do that ourselves as women. Instead of looking at ourselves holistically in the mirror, we look at all the flaws and we don't see any of the good, and it's easy to do that in marriage.

And I think, too, especially if you're a stronger woman and a woman that's a leader, and maybe our husband isn't as strong, we expect him to become this man that is stronger than us, and that may never happen. I know that, I don't know if you want to bring this up, but I remember, Anne, back before COVID, you said you got a text from a woman in our church that said, I want to leave my husband because he doesn't want to go to church because he doesn't want our kids around this virus. He won't shake hands. Yeah, and so he didn't want to go to church, and she's like, I want to, I mean, Anne just sort of relayed this story, and I said, what are you going to say to her? Tell him what you said, because I thought it was really beautiful.

She was looking at the negative. She said, he's being a bad example to our kids because he's being unfriendly to other people. But what I said was, oh, isn't it good that you have a husband who's being protective of you, who's watching out for you, who's watching out for the kids?

Maybe you approach him in that vein of saying thank you for being such a protective husband and a protective father. Here's a principle that I've learned in marriage, and Marianne and I have talked about this many times. Most of the times in our marriage where we are observing weaknesses, weaknesses are strengths that get overused or overplayed. So a weakness manifests itself when we're taking something like, I want to be a protector to my family, and we overuse that or we overemphasize that to the point that now all of a sudden it becomes debilitating or somebody who is passionate about things, and you think, well, that's a strength that somebody would be a passionate person. But when you overuse passion, it can become anger or it can become too emotionally laden.

What's an example of that? Well, let's say a person is analytical, okay? And so they're good at analyzing what are the circumstances and what's going on and what's the right thing to do. And they overuse their analytical side, but they devalue what's the emotional makeup that's going on here. What we have to do in a situation like this is recognize that behind a weakness, there's often a strength that is just being overplayed. And if we can value the strength, if you can say to your spouse, one of the things I love about you is how passionate you are. Sometimes you lean into that a little too strong and it winds up being a problem for us.

That's different than why are you always so angry, right? And in the case that you mentioned where a husband is saying, I don't want the kids to get exposed to this. Well, there's a strength there. He wants to be a protector. That's what you were pointing out to your friend.

Is he overusing it? Well, they can have that conversation about is this too protective? Or where does the fear come from?

That's right. To go deeper. So, again, we're talking to a wife who's frustrated about her husband not leading the relationship spiritually. We're saying do you have a realistic expectation? Are you valuing the good things about your spouse? The principle we're following here is before you go to try to fix your spouse, have you looked at your own eyes, the logs that are in your own eyes? Have you gone through a checklist and said, okay, I need to really think this through carefully rather than just jumping on the one thing that's frustrating to me right now?

Let's talk about this. As men, what motivates you? Maybe you tend to be more passive as a man or not as strong of a leader. How can we as a wife motivate you in those areas of leading? I mean, I laugh because it's like every man is motivated by praise, by affirmation, by appreciation.

Every woman is too, actually. But I know that when you and any wife sort of critiques or is disappointed and you sort of think, like, you know, I'm going to be the coach that's going to kick him in the rear end and it's going to get him going. I thought that was helping. Was it not working?

No. I mean, and obviously there are times where that does work. There are coaches that use that at times and it works. But generally, I think for me as a man, I can't speak for Bob, but I've talked to a lot of men that feel like that demotivates. Yet when you praise, I've said this many times, when you started praising who I was as a man, I actually didn't think I was that good that you were saying I was, but I wanted to be. So it motivated me to be the man you said I was that I wasn't yet, which doesn't make any sense. But it was motivating, and again, I'm not saying every man's motivated that way, but it made me step up. I agree with that. And Bob, would you, is that true for you?

I think it is. I've said for years that guys are not going to keep playing a game that they're not any good at. A guy goes out and plays golf three or four times and goes, I'm just not getting the hang of this. He's not going to keep trying to conquer it. He'll just say, I'm going to go to something that I'm good at. Well, if he's tried leading his family spiritually three or four times, and he just goes, this does not work at all. I feel like a failure. Then he's not motivated to try the fifth time.

He just says, I'm going to try something else, because this obviously doesn't work. So if a wife can come along and say, here's what I saw in that. It's what you did with Dave. You've shared the story on Family Life Today about acknowledging the power he had in your son's lives and how they listened to him and how they gravitated. And you pointed it out and you said, I'm jealous of the power that you carry. And when Dave heard that, he goes, oh, there is something here that I'm good at. And you leaned into that. Yeah, and I think for me, and I've talked to enough men to know this is common. I felt like I could lead in other areas of my life better than I could lead my wife spiritually or my kids spiritually.

Why is that? Well, part of it was I was trained, you know, as an athlete so I could walk on a field and feel confident. You know, I know what to do. I know how to read this coverage. I'm prepared. Give me the ball.

Let's go. I got a degree. I went to seminary. I have an understanding. I'm not saying I'm great, but I can preach. I know how to lead a church. I know how to cast vision.

I know how to. And then I walk in my back door and I felt a paralysis, like I don't know what to do. I don't know what she wants. Her expectations are way up here. I'm supposed to walk in and be Dennis Rainey, you know.

And I don't even know what that means, but I hear it all the time. And nobody's really prepared. I don't remember a class in seminary about leading your family. And by the way, there should be, but there wasn't. And so I'm on my own. So, okay, what did my dad do? Oh, he left.

Okay, so I don't have that. What did my pastor do at the church? I grew up.

I have no idea. So again, you feel this paralysis and you're scared because you know there's an expectation. I can feel it at the dinner table.

The kids are sitting there. There's Ann like, come on, do your thing. I'm like, what's my, you know, so there's, and I think sometimes fear paralyzes you. And so instead of doing a wrong thing, you do nothing. And that's like the worst thing because your wife's like, oh, she's so disappointed.

Well, and we're back to expectations because it may be that you were not doing nothing, but you weren't living up to Ann's idealized view of things. And this is where I think a wife needs to look at her husband and say, okay, what is he doing? Is he modeling godly character?

That's a good point. Is he an honest person? Are there things that he's- Is he hardworking? Is he busy providing? And can we lean into some of those things and just say, I'm so grateful that our kids are growing up seeing somebody who values hard work or who's honest.

This is so important. A lot of kids don't have that. We've said for years that as parents our kids are going to pay more attention to what is caught than what is taught. And so if parents only had one option, you can either have devotion times with the kids and do all the formal training, quiet times, all of the read bedtime stories, but don't model anything spiritually. That's one option. Or the other option is don't do any of that stuff, but model godliness.

If you had to pick one, pick model godliness, right? Because at the end of the day, that's what's going to make a bigger impact in a child's life. The point is you don't just have one. It's not an either or.

It can be a both and. But I think a wife can acknowledge and validate these are the things you are doing that are making spiritual deposits in our kids' lives, and I'm grateful for that. I think, too, to have the conversation with your spouse of saying, what would it look like?

Like, let's dream together of what we want spiritually for our family. Is that intimidating if a wife asks that question? No, it depends how.

Yeah. You know, if she does it like you just did, that's pretty tender and still a little bit scary for a man to enter that conversation. But I think we had that conversation. And what I learned over the years is you didn't need me to be, Dennis. All you said really was just lead any way you want.

Because you finally gave up the it's going to look like this and step back and said it's going to look like the way God's made Dave. And the way God made me was I want to teach through life. And so you encouraged me to say, well, grab those moments then, because you're good at that. And when you're watching TV or you're in a moment, just turn it and go, hey, let's go vertical here.

Hopefully that's what I'm doing anyway in my life. I remember, and again, I'm like a lot of guys, I'm like, just tell me what to do. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And I remember doing a lion's chapel, I don't know, 20-some years ago when a guy came up after and said my wife wants me to lead her spiritually. I don't know what to do.

And I said, I know what to do. Here's a devotional. It's a daily devotional. Read it with her. There's a little prayer at the end. It'll take you five minutes.

Do that every day. This is a tool. So I gave him something out of the toolbox and he did it. And I didn't know he did it.

He never said another word about it for several weeks. And then I run under Rebecca, his wife somewhere, and she goes, oh, my goodness, thank you. I go, what? My husband is now leading me spiritually. And it's because you gave him this little devotional book. We do it every night.

It's unbelievable. It's changed our entire marriage. I'm like, oh, that's good. And again, it was just, and so what do we have? Family Life has all kinds of tools. We have the story of us where it's all the speaker couples writing little devos that you can do daily.

There's a tool. Just take it, guys. I can make a guarantee. A hundred percent of the wives listening right now are going to say, if my husband said, let's do this, I'm in. I doubt if any of them are going to say, no, I don't want to do that. They're going to say, I'm in because he's going to, in a small, simple way, initiate.

That's really what it came down to. You just said to me, just initiate. It doesn't have to be a big prayer. It doesn't have to be a long Bible study.

All you have to do is just take a step and we'll all follow. And it changed our family. It was interesting. I was leading a Bible study with Detroit Lions wives, probably around 20 of them.

And they're all in their 20s and 30s. And one wife said, it's interesting what we've been doing every morning. My husband wakes me up and we do a YouVersion Bible app devotional together before he leaves for work. And the wives stopped. There was silence and they were like, wait, wait, what do you do? And she said, yeah, it just only takes 10 minutes, but we read that together. It's scripture. Then we pray quickly.

It's not very long. There was so much jealousy in the room. And yet all they're doing is reading it together, being intentional of taking the time. But every wife was longing for that. You know, I think most guys, when they hear that, they're thinking to themselves, okay, I could try that. But honestly, I will feel like a poser and like a fraud if I say to my wife, let's read this devotional. It's like, she's going to be thinking, oh, who do you think you are?

Really? Sure. And we think, you know me. You know the flaws. You know that I'm not Dennis Rainey. I'm not the initiator. Right. And so if I do this, you're going to go, what do you want?

How long will it last? Yeah, right. Although could it be, and I hope the wife would look at this, and the husband could go the other way. It's like, wait a minute. If you said, hey, tomorrow morning I'm getting up, I'm going to start a workout program. It might be like, you've never done that before, dude, but it'd be like, wow, that's inspiring. Good for you. Well, it's the same thing. It's like, I want our marriage to be different.

I'm not very good at this. I've never even done it before, but will you go with me? Let's start a workout program together called Devotions or whatever you want to do. Maybe it's a five-minute, two-minute, one-minute prayer.

Why not aspire to something better and greater than where you are right now? And maybe you start with once a week if you haven't been doing anything. Although you're not going to lose 20 pounds once a week. You're going to have to do it every day. No, three times a week.

I think the key too is for us as women not to become resentful, because there's a seed of bitterness and resentment that can start to grow that vanquishes your feelings for your husband. And let me add this. Just one last thought.

Just hit me. I was thinking, okay, if you think like an athlete or a business person or whatever, and you want to be the first stringer. I mean, I was a quarterback. I didn't want to be the backup. I wanted to be the starter. If I'm the backup and the starter's better than me, what am I going to do if I want to get that job? Man, when he goes to bed at night, I'm working out. This is Bode Baucom who says this too.

I'm watching film. I'm doing whatever it takes to get first place. So I know a lot of guys say, well, my wife's more spiritually mature than me. She's probably a better leader than I should be.

And I'm like, when she goes to bed, get in the word. Get in a small group with guys. If you're like, you're not there yet, like let's rise to the place and win that job because it's the job God gave you.

Why wouldn't you say this is more important than anything else? So I'm looking at men right now and saying, dude, be the starter. You can do it. It's going to take some time and practice.

You can do it. And when you take it, your wife's going to fall right behind. What did you say to the wife who said, I'm frustrated.

I want to get a divorce because he's passive and won't lead our family spiritually? I pointed her to the good things. And I also said, God has made you a natural leader.

And this probably hurt her feelings a little bit. And I said, you're a little bit scary. You're so strong that it probably scares him to the point of not knowing what to do because he's going to be scared he's doing it wrong. And I said, so if you could pull back just a little bit.

You're a natural leader. If he doesn't pray, pray. If you're going to bed and you're talking about spiritual things and he doesn't kind of jump on the page with you, then it's okay. Tell him that he's a good man. See the things and say the things that you see that are really great about him. And she went on to say he loves Jesus.

He just doesn't know how to pursue him in the way that I do. And I said, it's not going to look like the way you're doing it. It will look different and that's okay. Yeah. Dave, you mentioned tools that you recommended to guys. The couples who speak at our Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaways have collaborated on a devotional that couples can read once a week together to facilitate a spiritual conversation and have a time to pray together. Now, again, it's once a week.

So, we're trying to make this as easy and doable for couples as possible. Set your date, plan that every Sunday night or every Thursday morning, whenever you want to do it, you're going to get out the story of us devotional. Read that week's devotional. Spend a little time praying together.

That's a step in the right direction. You can go to our website, familylifetoday.com, to find out more about the story of us devotional. You can order it from us online or you can call to order. And then I'd just recommend, guys, read your book, Vertical Marriage. In fact, what I'd suggest is that you read a few pages of that book out loud together as a way, again, to have some spiritual dialogue in your marriage. The book by David Ann Wilson is called Vertical Marriage, the one secret that will change your marriage. Go to familylifetoday.com to order your copy of the book or call us at 1-800-358-6329 to order a copy.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. You know, I sometimes wish our listeners could just spend a couple of days with us, listening to some of the phone calls that come in, reading the emails, the letters that we get from people, hearing about the impact family life today is having in the lives of people all around the country. There are marriages that are still together because of this program.

There are children who are being pointed in a new direction because mom and dad are listening to family life today. And those of you who support this ministry, you're the ones making that possible. You're the ones who are providing the practical, biblical help and hope that so many couples are looking for today. Every time you donate, you're investing in their marriages and in their families. If you can make a donation right now to help support the ongoing work of Family Life Today, we'd love to say thank you by sending you a copy of a book written by Heather DeJesus Yates, who joined us this week on Family Life Today. It's a book about infertility and adoption and about how God can meet you in the midst of that journey and give you a bigger vision for your life, your marriage, and your family than maybe the one you started out with.

Maybe you know somebody who's on that path right now and you want to get a copy of the book to give to them as a gift. Make a donation to Family Life either online at familylifetoday.com or call to donate at 1-800-FL-TODAY. Ask for your copy of the book A Mother of Thousands by Heather DeJesus Yates, and we're happy to send it to you as our way of saying thank you for partnering with us in the ongoing ministry of Family Life Today. We appreciate you. And we hope you can join us again tomorrow when we're going to hear a conversation that happened recently as Ron Deal, who gives leadership to Family Life blended, spoke with Sandy Patty and her husband Don Pestlis about what happens when a marriage begins in the midst of a lot of brokenness.

That conversation comes up tomorrow. Hope you can be here for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.