This is an article I found online and am reprinting for your enjoyment. It’s too long to post in one setting, so will be doing it in five parts. Come back often, it’s worth reading!

How to Get Your Husband to Talk to You by Nancy Cobb and Connie Grigsby

My husband, David, has been working on a large project that takes up a lot of his free time. He has sacrificed time, energy, and money to make everything work together, and at moments, he’s wondered if it’s worth the effort. One day when he was working particularly hard, I came into his office with a glass of iced tea, looked him in the eyes, and said, “Sweetheart, do you know how proud of you I am?”

He looked at me almost with relief, then looked down and said, “Would you still be proud of me even if none of this works out?”

“Of course, I will be,” I softly assured him with a kiss and a smile. “I’m most proud of you for taking initiatives and seeking to do what’s right for our family.”

His eyes lit up and his face seemed comforted. As I departed the room, leaving him to his work, he took a deep breath and the rhythm of his fingers typed out a heartier tune. Just that one small comment from me seemed to give him the peace of mind and the energy that he needed to keep going.

If I were to guess, I would say that most of us wives are proud of our husbands. But if someone were to ask your husband, “When was the last time your wife let you know that she is proud of you?” What would he say?

Shaunti Feldhahn, author of For Women Only, surveyed 1,000 men to find out their emotional needs. On March 28, 2005, in an interview with Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine on “FamilyLife Today,” Feldhahn said: “For men, their highest need is not to feel loved and cherished, as it is [for women]. It’s to feel respected by us and trusted by us and, in fact, we can spend so much time trying to show our husbands that we love them, saying, “I love you,” and doing all these things to show love, but if we tease them in public or make them think we don’t respect their decisions or don’t trust when they make a choice, they will feel disrespected, and they won’t feel loved.”

Feldhahn isn’t the first to discover this truth. As a matter of fact, the Bible has been teaching us this fact for centuries. In Ephesians 5:33b, the apostle Paul is clear in his instruction to wives: “…the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.”

Taken from the September 2005 issue of The Family Room, FamilyLife’s online magazine. www.FamilyLife.com/familyroom. Copyright© 2005. All rights reserved. Used by permission

Stay tuned for the next installment, some practical helps and “how to’s”