Are You an Influencer or a Controller?

There is a principle that my wife, Sarah, and I seek to live by and that we share at our Love and Respect Conferences: I cannot control the outcomes in my spouse; I can only control my actions and reactions to my spouse. In other words, I can no more control what Sarah will say and do and the attitude in which she will say and do it, than she can control what I will say and do and the attitude in which I will say and do it.

And yet, don’t we often live in such a way in which we’re attempting to change the internal dimensions of our spouse, when the truth is they have to make that choice on their own? There’s a proclivity for us to try and control our spouse. And when we do, we lose it emotionally, don’t we? We lose our emotional control when we try to control our spouse.

Are you guilty of perhaps losing your emotional control at some point during this quarantine when you were attempting to control your spouse? Perhaps a stay-at-home mom isn’t used to having her husband home all day working in the office. Maybe he’s being louder on his conference calls than she would like, or maybe after he comes out to hurriedly fix and eat a quick lunch, he leaves behind him what looks to his wife like a tornado came through her kitchen. Or maybe the husband is having trouble adjusting to working around the family all day and wishing things were quieter around the house, or that he’d get less interruptions during the workday. Are things like these causing you to lose emotional control?

In times like these, it’s tempting to be negative in our reactions in order to motivate our spouse to be positive in their actions. On paper that idea may look silly, but it’s oftentimes how we live, isn’t it? We are negative in order to achieve a positive. But that will never work, not even in math! Going back to grade school, you'll remember that if we add a negative number to another negative number, the result will always only be a larger negative number! We can never make a negative number positive unless we add a positive number that is larger than the negative one.

Therefore, the mature person figures out the math and realizes that we cannot control our spouse’s heart; however, we can certainly influence their heart. And there’s a big difference!

When we attempt to control our spouse, we tell ourselves that we are going to do whatever it takes to get them to behave in a certain way, with the thought that if we’re extremely negative, then they are going to make an internal choice to be positive. And short-term, that might even work sometimes. We all know that if a husband screams loud enough with a hostile, harsh attitude, his wife is going to go quiet, and maybe acquiesce so as to keep the peace. He may then conclude that his strategy of controlling by way of going negative works. But it won’t long-term!

When we seek to control the behavior of our spouse and the internal choices they make, we’ll lose their heart . . . always. Guaranteed. No one is going to keep their heart open to someone who is hostile, contemptuous, negative, unloving, disrespectful, and controlling in order to get them to make the choice to be more loving and respectful. It doesn’t work that way.

The mature person comes to the point where they realize, “I can only control my own actions and reactions to my spouse. I cannot control the outcomes in them.” So then what can we do instead? We must seek to influence the spirit of our spouse. When we choose to respond with love and respect, independent of our spouse's actions or reactions, I believe that God hardwired people of goodwill to eventually respond in kind. Long-term, we will influence their heart toward love and respect as well.

Short term, there is risk. When I’m loving toward Sarah’s spirit, though her spirit softens and she is more open and empathetic toward me, this still doesn’t mean that she agrees with what I’m saying. So maybe I’m not going to get all that I wanted in that particular moment had I been coercive and harsh. But generally speaking, I have found very few women resist a husband’s loving, thoughtful position long-term.

Husbands, trust me. I’ve received enough emails over the years to know this to be absolutely true: your wife wants you to be the family’s spiritual leader. Trying to control things with harsh, demeaning, coercive talk will not affect her heart positively. But if you said things like, “Let’s pray about that,” “Let’s look at what the Scriptures have to say about this,” or “What are your thoughts on this?” your goodwilled, godly wife will not resist!

And wives, I understand that any contempt or coercion on your part is rooted in fear and motivated by love. Your husband is lacking in many areas and needs help at times. I get it! Your motivation can be good, but the methodology can be extremely imprudent. And long-term it’s not going to work. However, your husband will respond to a respectful action and reaction on your part. Yes, this may mean that you “lose the battle” at times. But if “winning the war” means that your husband will realize you’re an honorable woman seeking to honor him, and then this in turn results in him feeling required by his masculine spirit to be responsive to your concern, isn’t that what your heart is really after?

So here's the deal. Remember the following: I cannot control the outcomes in my spouse. I can only control my actions and reactions to my spouse. But when I control my actions and reactions that are loving and respectful, over a period of time, I will influence my spouse. And how will this influence them? Our loving and respectful actions and reactions will motivate a goodwilled spouse to make a choice to be friendly, open to our position, empathetic, appreciative, even acquiescing.

In this time of quarantine, have you figured this out yet?