Tag: christian marriage

You Can’t Lead Who You Don’t Know

How Well Do You Know the Woman You’re Trying to Lead?

THIS WEEK

We’ve said a leader goes to God first, and serves before he leads. Here’s the third need, and it’s the one most of us are worst at — including me.

You cannot lead a person you don’t actually know.

A shepherd doesn’t lead sheep he’s never studied. A good one knows them. He knows which ones wander, which are anxious, which are hurting. And a husband who wants to lead his wife spiritually has to start by knowing her. Where is she struggling? What is she afraid of, and what does she long for?

Most of us think we already know her. We’ve been married twenty, thirty, forty years. But knowing her schedule is not the same as knowing her heart. And the only way in is a skill most men were never taught — listening.

You’ve been married long enough to predict what she’ll say. That’s not the same as knowing what she means.

· · ·

The counselors at The Ravines, who do intensive marriage work, named the problem exactly:

“Too often, couples speak to be understood rather than to understand. Servant leadership invites spouses to listen without planning a rebuttal — truly receiving the other’s heart.” — The Ravines, on servant leadership in marriage

Listen without planning a rebuttal. Be honest: how much of your listening is really just waiting? Waiting for the pause so you can say your piece. Waiting to correct the detail she got wrong and waiting to fix the problem so the conversation can end.

That’s not listening. That’s reloading.

Authentic listening—truly understanding her—means setting aside your own response and genuinely receiving her heart: not fixing it, not defending yourself, and not solving it —just receiving it, the way you’d want God to receive you.

And here’s what most men discover when they finally do it: the woman they’ve been married to for decades has depths they stopped exploring years earlier. She’s changed. She’s grown. She’s carrying things she never told you because you never really made space to hear them.

· · ·

There’s a beautiful line in the Song of Songs where the lovers call each other friend. Under all the romance, that’s what a marriage is supposed to become — a deep friendship.

A man who listens is doing the quiet work of leadership. He’s learning the terrain of her soul so he can lead her through it well. You’d never try to guide someone through country you refused to learn. Your wife’s heart is the country. Study it.

The husband who knows his wife’s heart can lead her. The husband who only knows her schedule can only manage her.

DO THIS THIS WEEK

Ask her one real question this week. Don’t say a word until she’s fully done.

This week, take time to sit with your wife and ask her a question you haven’t asked before. Avoid logistics and focus on meaningful topics like, “What have you been holding onto lately that I might have overlooked?” or “Where has your faith been feeling strong or drained recently?” Listen attentively until she finishes, avoiding the urge to respond, fix, or defend yourself. When she stops speaking, ask, “Is there more?” Your goal is to understand her heart so you can lead it. Be open to what she shares.

THE BROTHERHOOD

No man leads his marriage well alone. Here’s how to work this with other men.

Listening is a skill, and men sharpen skills best around other men who are working on the same one. Nobody gets better at this alone. If you regularly meet with a group of men, here’s how you can practice this together.

→ Report what you heard, not what you said. When your group gathers, have each man share one thing he learned about his wife this month by listening. If a man has nothing, something’s wrong. He didn’t ask, or he didn’t really listen. Let the group gently press him to try again.

→ Practice on each other first. Men are out of practice at being heard. Take turns letting one man talk for five minutes while the others listen—no advice, no fixing, no reloading. Learning to receive a brother’s heart trains you to receive your wife’s.

→ Keep each other from ‘fix-it’ mode. Give each other permission to ask, “Did you listen to understand, or listen to respond?” Most of us don’t even notice we’re doing it. Another man’s question wakes us up.

THE ANCHOR VERSE

“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” — James 1:19 (NIV)

The order is the whole lesson: quick to listen, slow to speak. Most of us reverse it, speaking quickly, listening slowly, and getting angry when we feel unheard. James offers an antidote in one verse. Lead your marriage with this order and see what opens up. Consider: When last did you listen to your wife without planning to respond, and what might you learn if you did so this week?

THE REBOUND LETTER — FREE · EVERY WEEK

Know a man who’s stopped really knowing his wife?

There’s a man in your life coasting on autopilot in his marriage — married for decades, but not really knowing her heart anymore. Forward him this letter. Sometimes one nudge is all it takes to get a man to sit down and actually listen again.

Forward this issue to one man →

Build Something New

God doesn’t hand you back the marriage you had. He builds a new one, right in the place where the old one ran dry.

You can’t get back what you had when you were twenty-five. What you can build now is better.

THIS WEEK

We’ve walked a long way together, men.

Four weeks ago I asked you to really look at your wife. Then to go first — to move toward her without keeping score. Last week I asked you to say the hard thing you’d been holding for years.

If you’ve done even one of those, I want you to hear something before we go any further:

You’ve done more for your marriage in a month than most men do in a decade.

You showed up. You did the hard, quiet work that no one claps for. That matters more than you know.

And now you’re asking a good question — maybe the best one yet.

What now?

· · ·

A lot of men get here and try to go backward.

They want the marriage they had when they were twenty-five. The spark. The ease. The way it felt before the mortgage and the carpools and the long stretch of years that wore the shine off.

I’ll be honest with you. You’re not going to get that back.

And here’s the grace in it — you don’t want to.

“What you had when you were twenty-five was built on almost nothing. What you can build now is built on everything.”

Think about what you actually have now that you didn’t have then.

You have history. You’ve watched each other fail, and you stayed. That’s not a small thing.

You have proof. She’s seen you at your worst. You’ve seen her at hers. And here you both still are.

You have time — maybe for the first time in decades, there’s actually room in the week.

And you have the one thing you couldn’t have had when you were twenty-five: you finally know what matters. Back then you only thought you did.

The marriage waiting for you in the second half is deeper than the one you started with. It’s just not automatic. Deep things never are. They get built.

· · ·

And here’s the best news in this whole letter. It’s not even mine — it’s God’s, and He said it to people who thought they’d lost everything.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” — Isaiah 43:18–19 (NIV)

Forget the former things. Stop trying to rebuild what used to be. That’s not what God is doing, and it’s not what He’s asking you to do either.

I am doing a new thing. Not the old marriage patched up. Something that has never existed before.

And look at where He does it. In the wilderness. In the wasteland. Right in the ground that looked dead. That looked finished.

“God doesn’t hand you back the marriage you had. He builds a new one, right in the place where the old one ran dry.”

That’s better than restoration. Restoration would give you back what you had — and what you had wasn’t enough. That’s how you ended up reading these letters in the first place.

God isn’t in the business of patching. He’s in the business of making new. And He does it in exactly the place you’d least expect — the worn-out, dried-up ground of a long marriage that lost its way.

· · ·

Here’s what building actually looks like, because it’s simpler than you think.

It’s not a vacation. It’s not one big romantic gesture. Those are moments, and moments don’t build anything that lasts.

Building means you make something together that wasn’t there before. Something ongoing. Something that needs both of you to show up, week after week.

For some of you, that’s a simple weekly rhythm — a regular walk or a morning coffee with no phones.

For some it’s a shared work — serving somewhere together, or walking alongside a younger couple who’s right in the middle of what the two of you already survived.

For some it’s just learning something new, side by side, where neither of you is the expert, and you both get to be beginners again.

It honestly doesn’t matter which one you pick. What matters is that it’s shared, it’s ongoing, and neither of you can do it alone.

That’s what rebuilds a marriage. Not a feeling you wait around for. A small, steady thing you build together until the feeling comes home on its own.

DO THIS THIS WEEK

This week, ask her one question — and do one thing.

Sit down with your wife this week and ask her this: “What’s one thing we could build together that we’ve never done before?” Then close your mouth and listen. Don’t arrive with the answer already picked. Let her dream out loud with you. Once you’ve landed on something — a Saturday walk, a couple you serve, a class you take together — start it this week. Not next month. This week, however small the first step is. Put it on the calendar before you go to bed tonight. The structure is what holds a marriage steady while the feelings find their way back.

THE ANCHOR VERSE

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls, one can help the other up.” — Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 (NIV)

A good return for their labor. Hear that. A marriage in the second half isn’t a feeling you stumble back into. It’s labor — and it pays.

You’ve already spent twenty-five years laboring for a career, a house, a family. You know how to work for something. Spend the next stretch laboring for her, and with her, and watch what it gives back.

If the two of you built one thing together this year — one thing that needed both of you — what would it be?

Ask her. Then build it.

It really is that simple. It’s just not always easy — because simple things ask you to actually do them, week after week, when nothing dramatic is happening. That steady showing up is the work. And God meets a man right in the middle of it.

THE REBOUND · 8-WEEK TRANSFORMATION

You’ve started the work. Let’s finish it together.

Four weeks of letters can point the way. Eight weeks of real work can change the road you’re on. Weeks 4 and 5 of the Rebound program go straight at coming home and pursuing her again — with a clear framework, the journal in your hands, and a man who has taken this exact road beside you. If these letters prompted something, that’s the next step.

Learn about the Rebound program →

— Ron

See Her Again

You spent twenty-five or more years building your family and your life – career, house, kids, reputation. And somewhere in all that building, your wife shifted from being the person you were curious about to being your business partner or roommate.

But the woman sitting across from you at breakfast is not the woman you married.

The love didn’t die. You just stopped looking.

THIS WEEK

We spent eight weeks talking about you.

Now I want to talk about her.

For the next four newsletters, we’re going to look at the marriage you’ve been coasting through — and what it would take to rebuild it in the second half.

Let me start with a question.

When’s the last time you really looked at your wife?

Not glanced at her. Not checked whether she was upset. But looked at her the way you did before you knew what she’d say next, before you could predict her opinions, before she became part of the furniture of your life.

Truth is, it’s easy to stop looking deeply. I know it’s not because you stopped loving her.

“The love didn’t die. You just stopped looking.”

· · ·

Here’s what happened, and I’ve watched it in a hundred marriages, including my own.

You spent twenty-five or more years building your family and your life – career, house, kids, reputation. And somewhere in all that building, your wife shifted from being the person you were curious about to being your business partner or roommate.

You know her schedule. You know what she’ll order at a restaurant. You know exactly what she’ll say about her family. In fact, you stopped asking questions because you thought you already had the answers.

But the woman sitting across from you at breakfast is not the woman you married.

She’s been through things. She’s changed her mind about things. She has thoughts she’s never told you — some of them about you — because you stopped creating the space where those thoughts could come out.

She’s a stranger you happen to know everything about.

· · ·

Look at what happens in Genesis 2. God brings the woman to the man, and Adam does something specific.

“The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.’” — Genesis 2:23 (NIV)

Adam sees her. And then he says something out loud about what he sees.

That’s the first recorded human speech in the Bible. It isn’t a command. It isn’t a prayer. It’s a man looking at a woman and telling her what she is to him.

“The first thing a man ever did in Scripture was see his wife — and then tell her what he saw.”

Most of us have gotten this exactly backwards. We think about her. We appreciate her silently. We assume she knows.

She doesn’t know. She hasn’t heard it in years.

And a woman who hasn’t been seen in years starts to disappear. She adjusts. She lowers her expectations to match what she’s actually getting. And that adjustment is not acceptance.

It’s grief that has learned to be quiet.

DO THIS THIS WEEK

Notice one thing about her. Then say it out loud.

This week, try to look at your wife as if you’re still discovering her. Focus on one specific thing: observe how she manages a challenging situation, something she excels at that you haven’t talked about in a while, or a quality of hers that you admire. Then, share that with her. Do it directly, not in a card or as part of a larger conversation. Simply look her in the eye and express your thoughts. Aim to do this once a day for seven days, and pay attention to what changes.

THE ANCHOR VERSE

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.” — Proverbs 31:30–31 (NIV)

Notice the instruction at the end. Honor her. Not appreciate her privately, not think well of her. Honor her — publicly, out loud, in front of people.

What is one thing your wife has done that you have never actually thanked her for out loud?

Go tell her.

________________________________________

THE REBOUND · 8-WEEK TRANSFORMATION

Rebuilding the marriage starts with rebuilding the man.

Weeks 4 and 5 of the Rebound program go straight at this — coming home, pursuing her again, and doing the honest work of showing up in your own marriage. If this letter called out something real in you, that’s the next step.

Learn about the Rebound program →

— Ron