Every woman wants a good, reliable, and steady man. Yet wives tend to respond with angst whenever their strong man doesn’t seem to fully “understand” or “relate” to them. Does he even care? The truth is, it’s a mistake to take your husband’s silence as apathy or detachment. A man bears burdens the way he lifts weights: He’s not thinking, “How do I feel?” but “What am I carrying?” A man doesn’t think, feel, or cry like a woman does. And that’s exactly the point — God made men and women differently (Gen. 1:27). There’s great beauty in His design for manhood and womanhood which expresses His glory to the world!  

Ephesians 5 says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. So what does that look like when you're dealing with a man? Well, every woman wants a good man, a reliable man. Often when she finds one, a solid, stable man, she becomes a little bit dissatisfied with him. Why?

Because he is a man. He thinks differently. He feels differently. He solves problems differently. He carries weight differently.

A man is a little bit like an iceberg. The heavy weight is submerged. It's there, but you just can't see it. And he looks steady on the outside. He looks maybe even dispassionate on the outside.

But his silence, his lack of passion isn't absence. There's a battle going on in his soul. What makes it hard for a man is when he has a quarrelsome wife and she's constantly dripping on a rainy day. She often expresses her disappointment in her tone. And that's really hard for men.

Here's why. Men shut down when they get emotional outbursts from their wives. And it's not because they don't care. It's because there's something in a man that shuts down when he is being attacked. Now he might attack back, well that would be sinful.

But often men go silent because they just don't know what to say and their women want leadership from their husbands. This all has to do with the differences between men and women. The difference is not a bug, it's not a defect, it's actually the design of God because men are built to carry weight. Men are built for conviction, women are built for connection. Generally, I know that there are exceptions.

But women should not make the mistake of taking a husband's silence for distance. Don't mistake steadiness for apathy. And it's important that men don't withdraw. It's important that men learn to speak and to talk more clearly about what's going on in them. God made men and women differently.

Praise God for that. That is the beauty of God's design for manhood and womanhood, for the expression of the glory of God in the world. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Scripture Applied is a production of Church and Family Life. Visit churchandfamilylife.com for more resources.