6 Traits of a Healthy Husband

What does a healthy husband look like? What steps can I take to stimulate growth and health in my role (or my spouse’s role) as a husband? Here are some guidelines.

1. A loving husband views his wife as a partner.

A wife is not a trophy to be won in courtship and then placed on the wall for all to observe along with our ten-point buck. She is a living person with whom to have a relationship. She is not a person to be dominated and controlled to satisfy our own goals. She is a person to be known who has goals of her own. She is not a child to be patronized. She is a partner with whom her husband is developing a relationship.

The idea of the wife as partner is as old as creation. Note in Genesis that while God instructs the man and woman to subdue the earth and rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and other living creatures, the man is told to become “one flesh” with his wife, not to dominate her.

Partnership is to permeate the entire marriage. Let me apply this concept to the area of decision making. When the husband truly views his wife as a partner, he will want decision making to be a joint experience. Perhaps in a given area, he will have more knowledge than she does. In another area, she may have more knowledge than he does. Seldom do we have the same amount of information regarding a given topic; so when we make decisions together, each gets the benefit of the knowledge and information the other has experienced or gleaned through the years. Partnership means that our goal is to make the best possible decision. Our personality type may be a “controller” or we may be “passive,” but we do not wish to allow our personality tendencies to dictate our decision-making process. We are consciously exalting partnership as being more important than our personality traits.

The husband as lover will be thinking about what is best for his wife, and his emphasis will be upon guiding the decision in that direction. If the wife is also loving, her focus will be on what is best for the husband. Ideally, after discussion of an issue a decision or compromise will be clear. Even when it is not, decision making will not be a game of manipulation where each is trying to get his own way. It will, in fact, be a partnership where each is looking out for the benefit of the other, and the result is a decision that is best for the whole or best for both of them.

As a leader, the husband takes the initiative in creating an atmosphere where this partnership can be played out without undue tension. He assures his wife that he sees her as a partner and deeply desires her input on the decision. When a child expresses desires, the father evaluates them and makes the final decision as to what is best for the child. The husband does not take his wife’s input that way. He sees her as an equal partner and has no desire to dominate her in the decision-making process. Nor will the loving leader be a dictator who makes decisions independently of his wife and informs her after the fact. This often happens in the business world where management makes the decisions and informs employees. But in marriage, both husband and wife are in management of the home. The loving leader recognizes this and seeks to create an emotional climate where free interchange of ideas can be done without a spirit of domination or intimidation.

On the other hand, the loving leader will not abandon the decision-making process and simply throw the ball to his wife. The “do what you want to do” attitude is not taking the leadership in partnership. Sometimes this attitude develops with the husband who has difficulty making decisions and finds it easier to yield that responsibility to the wife. Other times, this attitude develops out of a sense of resentment that the wife is going to have her way no matter what, so why fight it; just give up. Whatever the source of the attitude, it is not the position of the loving leader. The loving husband who finds this attitude arising within will seek to analyze the source and deal with it in a responsible manner so that he can return to the practice of partnership in decision making.

We are also partners in the financial area of marriage. Being partners does not mean that we do the same thing. In fact, in a true partnership, almost never do we each perform the same function. There are many models of financial partnership in a marriage. One is not necessarily better than another. Each couple must forge the model that fits the husband and wife’s personality, talents, desires, and values.

For Bob, the model is very simple. “I make the money; she spends the money. It’s a good arrangement. It works for us, and we’re both happy with it.” Another young couple are both medical doctors. “We both work; neither of us has time to spend the money; therefore, we have become wealthy. So far, so good. I don’t know what will happen when one or both of us stop working.”

Most models are not as extreme as these two illustrations, but there is no perfect financial model. What is important is that both of you have a sense of partnership in family finances. One of you may “keep the books,” or you may choose to do it together. What is best in your marriage is what the two of you agree on as partners. If either of you feels dominated or deserted, then you are not experiencing partnership. You may come to the financial table with different ideas, desires, and values. The loving husband takes the lead in seeing that these differences are fairly negotiated. If he must “tip the scale,” he does so in the direction of what is best for his wife. He is a loving leader with emphasis on loving.

2. A loving husband will communicate with his wife.

As I’ve explored in detail in my book The Marriage You’ve Always Wanted, many, though not all, men are much less verbally communicative than women. Therefore, many husbands will have to push themselves to go beyond what is “natural” for them in order to meet their wives’ need for communication.

Life is shared primarily by means of communication, particularly discussing our thoughts, feelings, and desires. These cannot be observed in our behavior. A wife may guess what is going on in her husband’s mind by his behavior, but unless that behavior is a pattern that he has exhibited with certain thoughts and desires previously, she is not likely to guess correctly. The old saying “I can read him like a book” is only true after there have been years of vigorous communication, and even then, it is only true in a limited sense. One of a wife’s deepest desires is to know her husband. When he talks about his thoughts, feelings, and desires she feels that he is allowing her into his life. When a husband goes long periods without talking about what he is feeling, she has the sense that he is cutting her out, and she feels isolated.

Sometimes a wife stifles her husband’s communication by her argumentative spirit or judgmental responses. Some time ago a husband said to me, “Dr. Chapman, I’ve just stopped sharing my thoughts with my wife because every time I discuss a thought with her, she pounces on it. She either disagrees with it or questions me about it or gives me a different perspective. It’s as though I’m not allowed to have a thought that she doesn’t want to scrutinize. I would be happy to tell my thoughts if she’d simply accept them as my thoughts.” After two counseling sessions, it became obvious that part of the problem was his own defensiveness. Having had his ideas put down as a child, he had subconsciously determined that as an adult, his ideas would always be right; thus, he became defensive whenever his wife or anyone else questioned his ideas.

Part of the problem also lay in his wife’s obsession with evaluating ideas and discussing each one to the final conclusion, proving one to be right and the other to be wrong. This pattern of communication is very stifling. Either of these patterns typically takes the help of a counselor to bring the couple to understand what is going on and to change the patterns. Whatever stops the flow of your communication needs to be discovered and eliminated. If you can do this by discussion between the two of you, fine. If not, then it is advisable to discuss it with a friend or to go for professional counseling.

We cannot afford to let communication come to a halt or to allow communication to simply be the battlefield upon which we fight out our differences. Positive, open, free, accepting communication is the characteristic of a functional marriage. The husband as loving leader must take the initiative in seeing that this kind of communication becomes a way of life.

3. A loving husband will put his wife at the top of his priority list.

All of us live by priorities. We may never have written a list of our priorities, but in our minds we rank some things as more important than others. These priorities are revealed most often by our actions. Answer the questions, “How do I spend my time? How do I invest my money? How do I use my energy?” and you will have the answer to the question, “What are my priorities?”

Many things compete for our attention in a marriage—work, chores, children, other outside commitments, perhaps our own parents’ needs. Let me address children in particular. A husband can be critical of his wife after the children come; he may feel that the children have “replaced” him in his wife’s eyes. This is a legitimate concern—and in fact is often the case. But it may also be true of the husband, particularly in a marriage where his emotional needs are not adequately met by the wife or he feels somewhat estranged from her. He may find himself focusing more time and energy on the children because he is receiving more feedback from them. The loving leader, if he observes this in his own behavior, will recognize this as unhealthy and will take steps to refocus his time and energy toward meeting the needs of his wife and helping her learn how in turn to meet his needs.

4. A loving husband will love his wife unconditionally.

Unconditional love means that we love the individual and thus seek her best interest regardless of her response to us. This is profoundly countercultural. Contemporary ideas of love run along the lines of “I will love you if you will love me.” We tend to be egocentric even in marriage. The focus of our effort is to get our own needs met. In fact, much of modern psychology has emphasized this as normal behavior. Some have gone so far as to say that all of our behavior toward others is motivated by getting our own needs met.

Unconditional love, on the other hand, focuses on meeting the needs of the other person. In marriage, it is the husband looking out for the wife’s best interest. It is supporting her in her endeavors even when he may not totally agree with them. It is helping her reach her goals and aspirations because he values her as a person. It is not “I’ll put the kids to bed if you will give me sex.” It is “I’ll put the kids to bed because I know you are tired.”

All of us would like to think that someone loves us unconditionally. The child longs for this kind of love from his parents, but husbands and wives also desire unconditional love from each other. The wedding vow was to love “in sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth, so long as we both shall live.” This is a commitment to unconditional love. In a healthy marriage, we will actually experience it.

Far too many husbands who view themselves as macho leaders are waiting for their wives to take the lead in unconditional love. They are sitting back saying, “When she decides to become affectionate, when she decides to think about my needs, when she decides to be more responsive to me, then I’ll start loving her.” But a healthy husband will take the lead in unconditional love. Since this need is so fundamental to one’s emotional health, most wives will respond positively to a husband who loves them unconditionally. Far too many wives live with a haunting feeling that unless they perform sexually or otherwise in an approved manner, their husbands’ love will be withdrawn. This does not engender a healthy marriage.

5. A loving husband is committed to discovering and meeting his wife’s needs.

Perhaps this seems redundant in the light of what we have just said about unconditional love. But it has been my observation through the years that many husbands simply do not understand the needs of their wives. Consequently, in their ignorance, they make no effort to meet those needs. Some husbands believe that if they work at a steady job and bring home a decent salary, they have completed their role as husband. But a wife’s most basic emotional need is to feel cared for. The functional husband will discover his wife’s primary love language and will speak it regularly while sprinkling in the other four. His wife will live with a full love tank, and chances are she will greatly admire and respond to the husband who is meeting this need. Her need for security is also fundamental. It is first a physical need—what husband hasn’t stumbled out of bed at three in the morning to investigate a “strange sound”?—but her greatest security need is the need for the deep assurance that her husband is committed to her. The husband who threatens his wife with words of divorce or offhandedly makes comments like “You’d be better off with somebody else” or “I think I’ll find someone else” is playing into a harmful pattern.

The loving husband will make every effort to communicate to his wife that whatever happens, he is with her. If there are disagreements, he will take the time to listen, understand, and seek resolution. If she suffers physical or emotional pain, he will be by her side. Betsy expressed it well when she said about her husband, “I know that Greg is with me no matter what happens. He is committed to our marriage. It gives me such a feeling of security.” The loving husband is also concerned about his wife’s sense of self-worth. If she finds fulfillment and meaning from playing softball, then he will be her number one cheerleader. If she finds fulfillment in being the best computer expert with the company, he is there to express his admiration for her skills. If she chooses to be a “work at home” mother, he will support her decision wholeheartedly. Any of these avenues of gaining self-worth may cause him some emotional concern or require more physical work on his part. But he is willing to talk with her about his emotional struggles and seek understanding and unity because he is committed to her well-being.

We are not only physical and emotional, but we are also social creatures. Some men resist their wives’ need to develop social relationships outside job and family, or at least passively let their wives plan all their social commitments. A wife may want her husband to attend the symphony with her. She may want him to initiate a neighborhood dinner or participate with her in a church Bible study. Such activities may not be on the top of his priority list, but they quickly ascend in importance because meeting her needs is important to him. He recognizes that in helping her develop social relationships, he is enhancing her sense of fulfillment. He does not decry these things or put them down as being superficial and unimportant. He sees them as a normal part of her life, and he allows her interests to lead him to meet her needs.

6. A loving husband will seek to model his spiritual and moral values.

All men have spiritual and moral values. By moral values, I mean a set of beliefs about what is right and wrong. By spiritual values, I mean a set of beliefs about what exists beyond the material world.

In a healthy, loving family, what a man values will be shown by how he lives. The closer a man comes to living by worthy spiritual and moral beliefs, the more he will be respected by his wife. The greater the gap between what he proclaims to believe on these issues and what he actually does, the greater the disrespect he engenders.

It is true that some men are not as comfortable with open, verbal displays of spiritual commitment as women are, or may express their faith commitment in other ways—for example, serving alongside other men in a church work project. Therefore, it is important to look beyond specific practices such as “leads family devotions” to such broad areas as kindness, integrity, and dependability.

In spiritual and moral issues, the husband’s best leadership tool is his own model. If the wife sees his life as being consistent with what he says he believes, she will respect him even if she disagrees with his beliefs. But if he does not live by his espoused beliefs, then she loses her respect for him. This does not mean that the husband must be perfect. It does mean that he must make a conscientious effort to apply his spiritual and moral beliefs to his own lifestyle. When he fails, he must be willing to acknowledge his failure and ask forgiveness. It is in this act of confession that he demonstrates that his beliefs are strong and genuine and that he will not excuse himself for wrong behavior. Spiritual and moral beliefs are better caught than taught. The loving husband will seek diligently to be authentic. Such authenticity will have a positive influence upon his wife and his children. Anything less will make him appear hypocritical.

Before leaving this area, I must acknowledge that within the Christian worldview, such authentic living is not thought to be obtained by human effort but is the result of a person’s opening his life to the Spirit of Christ and allowing that Spirit to shape his thinking and actions. It is a cooperative effort between his spirit and the Spirit of God. It is not the result of isolated self-discipline. This, in fact, is one of the unique distinctions of the Christian faith. It is a reality that personally I have found to be extremely liberating.

While not a comprehensive list, the six characteristics listed above will serve as guidelines for the husband who seeks to be a loving leader in his marriage. I wish that in the early days of my marriage someone had given me such a list. Most of the above principles I learned through several years of intense marital struggles. Most of these characteristics were not true in the early years of my own marriage. In my mind, that accounts for most of the difficulties my wife and I encountered in those years. By the time John, our live-in anthropologist, spent the year with us, most of these characteristics had been developed to some degree in my relationship with Karolyn. Here in John’s own words is what he observed.

I saw you as the spiritual leader in the home. You took initiative in such things as reading the Bible with the family and prayers at meals, but I never felt you did this in a domineering way. It seemed like a natural part of life. The whole family was involved.

I remember you seemed eager to serve Karolyn. You seemed to respect her greatly. I never felt you took advantage of her. You viewed her as an equal partner. Actually both of you showed genuine respect for each other. You were very different in personality, but you seemed to complement each other. Neither seemed to be jealous of the other. You worked well as a team. I’m still in admiration of that.