When my wife and I first got married, I was convinced that I knew how to be a great husband. However, it didn’t take long to see that I still had a lot to learn about caring and loving on her.
Over the last 12+ years of marriage, we’ve learned the other spouse’s needs are sometimes very different than our own and that there are seasons, in which those needs change and when we fail to realise what our spouse needs most, it can lead to unnecessary, frustration, friction, and even resentment towards one another.
As men, we are wired with different needs than our wife and we can be very clueless as to what they need. Here are 3 questions that can help you KNOW what your wife needs now.
1. What makes you feel loved?
Feeling loved is to feel important, wanted, and cared for and we all feel loved in different ways, for men it might be to physically be with your wife, while for your wife it might be receiving a gift.
Ask your wife what makes her feel loved? What makes her feel important and cared for?
If you need help with this one I can highly recommend the book The 5 Love Languages where Gary Chapman explores the 5 ways most people feel loved:
- Words of Affirmation
- Acts of Service
- Receiving Gifts
- Quality Time
- Physical Touch
The answer can change depending on the season your family is in and might be a good question to ask every 6-12 months.
2. What do you need?
What she needs is different from what makes her feel loved. This is her “musts” things she needs to do to take care of herself or things she needs to do to make her feel more productive. These are things that can go into the calendar and that might require you to schedule a time for her to be able to do it.
Things like:
- She needs to exercise every day
- 2-hour alone time once a week
She might have a lot of needs, obviously, be clever about this one and pick the 3 – 4 most important ones and work around your schedules and family dynamic.
Ways to ask this question:
- What do you need to do each day?
- What do you need to do this week?
- What do you need to do every month?
- You can even ask her what you need to do today/this week to help her out.
You can change the “need” to must – What must you do today / this week or month?
3. How is your heart?
Connect with her heart, make sure she is living in peace, and keep account of how she is feeling and protecting her heart.
Other ways to ask the question.
- Do you feel hurt by anything I or any anybody else has done or didn’t do?
- Is there a grudge you are holding against anybody?
Just be careful not to go into a fix-it mode with this one, except if it is something that you need to change about yourself.
Our wives want to see that we take interest in them, Their dreams, daily battles, and their heart. But we can’t expect them to pour out their heart without our support.