SWM004: Why your wife can’t tell you what she wants

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This episode answers a question I get from a lot of husbands: why can’t my wife just tell me what she wants. It used to drive me mad early in my own marriage, until I worked out the answer. Now I see it as an opportunity rather than a frustration. Check out the show notes here for more details and links.

It shows up everywhere, from what do you want for supper to waiting during sex for her husband to take the lead. Part of the problem sits with the husband: men have been trained to defer to women, to be the Nice Guy, to put her preferences ahead of their own. So when finally asked to state a desire, he says I do not know, because he has no idea how to resolve being asked for the thing he has been taught not to have.

The other part is that she may genuinely not know either, and that telling him would defeat the point. What she wants, consciously or not, is for him to lead. If she specifies it and he then does it, he has not led, he has followed instructions. I look at why that desire is there, from Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5, and at how Genesis 3:16 sets up the conflict: he has the authority to lead and she will be inclined to control. Men carry a mirror of that conflict from the culture, given a role to lead and taught to be submissive.