On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.
On today's episode, Coach Jack talks about how what you do adds to or subtracts from your husbands love for you.
After listening to today's episode, you may want to:
On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.
On today's episode, Coach Jack talks about how what you do adds to or subtracts from your husbands love for you.
After listening to today's episode, you may want to:
How Do I Get My Husband to Love Me?
(Podcast Transcript)
(0:00)
[Introduction to the podcast]
Announcer: On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.
(0:29)
Coach Jack: You can get your husband to love you more by making a few important changes in yourself
Some women find that their husbands have lost interest in them. Instead of love, they see a tired or impatient look in their husband’s eyes. And, these women feel less important than the TV, or computer, or even their husband’s friends.
Being his wife is not enough
We need to take a moment to think about why husbands love their wives in the first place. Although many women think that they will be loved simply because they are the “wife,” love doesn’t come from obligation or roles.
(1:03)
I don’t value my doctor simply because he is a doctor, though he may think I should. I only value him because he provides quality care, is patient with my questions, and treats me like I matter. I have had many doctors who don’t do that. Our roles are never enough to create feelings of respect, trust, or love.
Of course there are many men who love their wives dearly. I am included in that group. They don’t love all women dearly, so it isn’t because they are just love filled men. What is it that makes them feel this way about their wives? What is going on in these relationships? What is it about the wives that creates such strong feelings in their husbands? These are the questions you need to consider if you want to get the same kind of love that they do.
Some women try to get more love by pleasing their husbands, but that doesn’t work.
(1:59)
While some women focus on pleasing their husbands, that usually does not stimulate their husband’s love. Men who already love their wives will make her feel even more special for what she does for him, but that is not why he loves her. Men who don’t love their wives so much will enjoy her pleasing behavior without giving much in return.
When women focus on pleasing their husbands in order to get more love, they usually end up feeling resentful with less feelings of love for their husband.
Focusing on pleasing your husband can create the same problem that it does with parents who focus on pleasing their children–they end up with a husband who is self-centered and demanding. Of course that doesn’t mean that parents should never please their children. It means that pleasing takes a back seat to love, which often has to do things which are not pleasing.
Pleasing, like candy, is a sweet thing but you can’t grow a relationship on it.
(2:57)
Please your husband because you love him. Don’t please him in order to get love from him.
Love is fostered the same way commitment is
There are a lot of needy women who see boyfriends come and go without committing to them. Although they are working to please the men so that the men will love them, they don’t become valuable enough for the men to commit to them. What initially pleased the men a lot becomes less and less pleasing, just as a favorite toy can end up collecting dust under the bed. Other activities become more appealing.
For commitment, a man has to find something in a woman he believes he won’t find in another woman. This is also true for a married man to stay committed in his heart.
There are specific skills and qualities a woman can develop to get love and commitment from a man:
(4:06)
A woman who has these skills and qualities will far outshine any other woman. She will be a woman her husband never wants to lose, and she will be a woman he desires to be with each day. All four of these skills are essential to getting love. Missing just one will take a large toll on a relationship.
The same skills and qualities apply to men.
Boundaries are healing and promote a loving relationship
It really is surprising to many women that boundaries are helpful in stimulating a man’s love. After all, boundaries mean making changes in oneself that do not go along with the damaging behaviors of one’s partner (or others).
To understand how boundaries build love, consider how hard it is to love someone you don’t respect. Respect is earned and when we don’t earn it we lose love. Boundaries are what build respect. Keep in mind that boundaries alone will not get you love. It is only when you combine boundaries with the other essential skills and qualities that they will foster love.
(5:12)
I have written on boundaries elsewhere, but I can give you an example of a couple now.
Walking away when someone is verbally abusive is a boundary. Done consistently, while maintaining the other loving qualities, will foster respect.
Refusing to answer all your husband’s questions is a boundary. Done consistently, while maintaining the other loving qualities, will stop interrogation and foster respect.
There is a boundary for every damaging behavior. When we fail to use good boundaries we become part of the reason that the damaging behavior continues.
Many women don’t have good success with boundaries because they fail to balance them with loving behavior. As a result, they get resentful compliance, but not an improved relationship. Many parents have the same problem with their children.
(6:03)
In my book, What to Do When He Won’t Change, I help women to have a loving approach with strong boundaries to improve their relationship with their husbands. Many women have written to me to tell me this alone saved their marriage.
It’s important also not to lose love by harmful words or actions.
There are many frustrations in marriage that mostly come from the differences between husbands and wives. In their frustration and because of poor communication skills, women and men often give messages that make their partner feel less desirable or even defective. Criticizing, complaining, and debating for example, magnify differences and create emotional distance.
Similarities connect. There is no other thing that can.
Withholding words of love and appreciation will emotionally starve a partner. People who are starving for a feeling of importance, acceptance, and desirability will get it anywhere it is available. If you emotionally starve your husband, his love will go to someone else.
(7:09)
Withholding your love for him in order to get more love from him will just get you even less love from him.
How do you think your husband would answer these questions:
If you would fail in one of these questions, you can immediately start to work on it. Some women will ask, Why should I treat him this way if he is not treating me this way? The answer is because that is the only way you are going to get the love you want.
Punishing him for his lack of love will never get you the love you want.
(7:57)
The Lord Jesus Christ taught: Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you (Matthew 7:12a NLT). How much would you be loving your husband if he were treating you the way you are treating him? What would be missing that you would want? Start providing that to your husband.
What does this mean on a practical level for you?
Well, that all depends on what you are doing now in your relationship and and what your husband is doing. If your husband is doing something which is damaging to your relationship, you need to deal with it by having good boundaries. But your boundaries will be ineffective unless you are making him feel loved, accepted, and important otherwise.
Here are the right steps in the right order:
(9:12)
Loving others is the best way to get love from others. That doesn’t mean just doing whatever they want. It means doing what is best for them–the loving and the tough.
Another very helpful thing is to overcome any insecurities you have.
Insecurity is a fear of what will happen or could happen to create loss or harm. Secure people take reasonable steps to create a safe and healthy relationship that is not likely to fail. They then enjoy their day to day relationship believing that if things do go badly, that it will be able to be dealt with at that time.
Insecure people instead use a variety of needy behaviors to look for danger. They are like hikers who cannot enjoy the hike because they are constantly looking for snakes. Needy people use control methods like criticism, interrogating, seeking reassurance, and complaining to try to make sure nothing bad is happening or will happen. Unfortunately, these behaviors create the very thing they fear the most–losing their spouse or losing their spouse’s love.
(10:20)
If you are using such attempts at preventing damage instead of actively building your relationship, I recommend you get my book, Overcome Neediness and Get the Love You Want.
While we are on the subject, make sure you are not trying to get more love by talking about marriage problems with your husband. It is a myth that we improve relationships by talking about problems. We actually make our marriages worse that way. Let your experience teach you the truth about this.
Getting love and emotional commitment from your husband
Pleading, arguing, sexuality, promises, and bargaining are a few of the commonly tried shortcuts to getting more love. If you have ever truly loved someone, then you know they didn’t get your love by doing these things. I think instead they consistently made you feel important and desired. Single women who can make men feel this way are not going to have a hard time catching one. And, married women who make their husbands feel this way are not going to have a hard time growing and keeping their husband’s love.
(11:24)
Get back to this single mindset about getting love from men and apply it to your marriage. If you lack these skills and would like more help on creating more desire and love in your husband, I would be happy to help. Just take a look at the Re-Connections Coaching package on my website. Getting more love from your spouse is not a matter of you working with him. It is a matter of you being the kind of person who is easy to love, while still maintaining good boundaries.
(11:55)
[Podcast wrap-up]
Announcer: Thank you for listening to Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack. Visit coachjackito.com to learn more skills for reconnecting with your spouse and restoring your marriage.