A wife can do several things to bring about closeness.

First, let me say that it is okay to have emotional needs. I do not say this to those wives with a belligerent personality toward their husbands so that they may slam him with my words. I do not have the combative woman in mind. Instead, my frame of reference is the woman filled with doubt about her right to have emotional needs because her husband persuaded her that she should not have emotional needs.

I received the following email from a single woman who captures what many wives feel:

“I am 32 years old and single. About 3 months ago my boyfriend of one year broke up with me because he said I was too emotional. He said that feelings don’t matter, emotions don’t matter and it’s pointless to give anyone emotional support. He said that all men feel that way. God has used your book (Love & Respect) to help me understand that while it is not natural or comfortable for a man to meet a woman’s emotional needs, a man can learn to do it with God’s help. The book also helped me to see that I am not more emotional than most women. I identified so much with the chapters on closeness, openness, and understanding. God used those chapters to build me up and help me gain the revelation that I’m not some weird overly emotional woman. I want what most women want in a relationship and I was just with a man who wouldn’t commit to giving it to me. Because of the book I am on my way to becoming whole again, learning more about my needs as a woman and what a man of God should do to meet them. I am praying that God will one day bless me with a love and respect marriage. God bless you and your ministry!”

So, to those wives who feel that your need for emotional closeness is out of line, I want to tell you that God made you with a desire to cleave to your husband. Cleaving is not necessarily clinging. God calls your husband to cleave to you, and God placed that desire in you as a woman. The idea of connectivity and attachment is colossal in the research among women. You are okay!

HOW CAN A WIFE BRING A GREATER SENSE OF CLOSENESS?

Ask Him

A. Ask him if he’d be open to doing this study on a wife’s need for her husband’s closeness but only if he feels your desire is to honor him, not dishonor him.

Wives, explain to your husband that you need his closeness because you need his strength, not because you want him to hear all of your complaints. Let him know that I, Emerson, feel some men avoid closeness because they feel disrespected and even shamed when getting too emotionally connected with their wives. Reassure him that I am male friendly and many husbands and wives appreciate my approach, even though this topic is on a woman’s need for closeness. I address a husband’s need for shoulder-to-shoulder time together without talking but doing an enjoyable activity together. Let him know that you want to go through that portion of this study as well (see part two, Shoulder-to-Shoulder Time With Him).

Don't Assume He Is Unloving

B. Do not assume that because your husband does not feel exactly like you do about closeness that he is unloving. There are other criteria for determining if he is unloving.

As I said to one wife, “To you, it appears, his unwillingness or difficulty to cuddle close says to you that he does not want to be spiritually and emotionally close to you. You have established in your mind that this means he really does not love you, at least in ways that mean something deep to you.” However, she read too much into the fact that he wanted closeness less than she did. Some wives interpret the quality of the marriage through this grid, and that can be a mistake.

A man who hugs less, holds hands less, is less affectionate, and wants to talk face to face less than his wife does, makes him more of a male, not more of an unloving person. If he is goodwilled and literally would die for his wife (remember, Jesus said a man has no greater love than to lay down his life for a friend), he should not be profiled as unloving because he has less of a need for closeness in the way his wife needs it. Many women’s images of men are based on Hollywood’s portrayal of men that in real life not one of those actors lives out in their own marriage. All the research points toward a woman’s driven desire for emotional connection that runs deeper and more intensely than it does in a man. That does not make her husband wrong or unloving; it just makes him different.

Michele Weiner-Davis, author of The Sex-Starved Marriage, writes, “I just read the article, ‘It’s Time for Men to Get Emotional.’ As a marriage therapist and author of many self-help books, I completely disagree with the premise. Some men have paltry relationship skills as do some women. But the primary reason men fall short on intimacy IQ is that women are doing the testing. We use stereotypical female standards to measure intimacy IQ. We expect men to get in touch with deeply personal feelings, feel comfort in doing so and then long for these regular tete-a-tetes. Unfortunately, this criteria is biased. There are many other ways in which people feel intimate and share closeness. Although women will never understand it, men feel very close to each other through action—when they go on fishing trips, play football, or watch the playoffs with their buddies. I suspect there is no sharing of deep personal feelings at these events. Yet this kind of male bonding is a very real, important connection, and is no less valid than the way women bond through ‘opening up’ and sharing feelings. . . . So rather than label men slow learners, I say we broaden our definition of what it means to be intimate. Women simply do not have a corner on the intimacy market. Men and women bring different intimacy skills to the marriage table. Let’s learn from each other.”

Sex and Emotion

C. Use his sexual need to explain your emotional need.

Wives, when you tell your husband that you want to be close to him emotionally, do not do that by suggesting you have no interest in sexual closeness. Do not pit the one against the other. Talk in terms of both but highlight that you need his strength and presence and that this non-sexual connecting contributes to your sexual interests. I tell men, and you can quote me, “As you need sexual release with your wife, your wife needs emotional release. As you need to connect with her physically for that sexual release, she needs to connect with you heart to heart for her emotional release. As you relax and feel content after sexual release, like a pressure has been reduced, so your wife relaxes and feels content after emotional release, like a pressure has been reduced.” Use the analogy. Say to him, “As you need to connect via sexual intimacy, I need to connect via emotional intimacy. As you need time together doing shoulder-to-shoulder activities without talking, I need time together face to face talking.” Ask him if that makes sense. Ask him if that sounds fair and balanced. Ask him if the two of you can meet halfway. Ask him if your approach would honor him.

A QUALIFYING REMARK ON SEX AND BOUNDARIES

Many wives want sexual intimacy in order to feel emotionally connected. So, I am not at all suggesting women are sexless. Please hear me. In fact, some wives feel deprived sexually and thus do not feel close or connected with their husbands. A lack of sexual intimacy can be interpreted by her as rejection of her. A wife writes, “I think I am the one that needs the physical closeness to him more. We go for very long periods without any form of intimacy and I have tried a lot of things, but I just cannot get him to be more interested. He is so busy, always hanging out with friends till late, etc. In fact, it is when I get really frustrated and give up, that he surprises me. He is 40 and I am 35 and he used to be much more interested in me. I am not oversexed, but I do need to hold him close.” Wives are crying out to me in emails, “What’s wrong with me and with him that he does not want me sexually?” This is why the Bible teaches that we must not deprive each other (1 Corinthians 7:5).

Let me add a word about boundaries. There are wives living in fear that their husbands are drawing close to another woman. This too is a mammoth concern. Some husbands blur their boundaries with other women, which sets off alarms in a wife.

A woman writes, “My husband has a female best friend which bothers me. They’ve been close friends for about 4 years now. He says he WILL NOT give up his relationship with her... I cannot feel close to him when there is this shadow of another woman in my marriage. My husband says I have nothing to fear in losing him to her, but I’m bothered by the closeness they share.”

I have heard this story many times and if I were a betting man I’d bet money on this guy’s unfaithfulness to his wife. This guy has overstepped a healthy boundary. Even if he hasn’t done anything wrong in his own mind, his wife feels this way, and that’s reason enough for him to back away. He would feel the same way his wife does if she had a close relationship with a guy friend and declared, “I will not give up the relationship with him.”

Fair is Fair

D. Start first with his need for shoulder-to-shoulder activities without talking.

Create a quid pro quo: your shoulder-to-shoulder time with him without talking in exchange for his face-to-face time talking. Quid pro quo means “something for something.”

Don't Push Him Away

E. Reduce your criticisms, complaints, and contempt that push him away.

This may be more about a wife’s disrespect than her husband’s lack of love. A wife writes, “I now ‘see’ how my lack of respect for my husband, withholding sex from him because I wanted emotional closeness first ... my ugliness with my words to him ... were all so very wrong.”

Each wife must ask herself, “Are we on the Crazy Cycle because I have been so disrespectful and then felt insulted by his unloving reactions like not wanting to be close to me when I contributed to the distance between us? I wanted him to meet my need for love, but I did not want to meet his need for respect.”

The thing I love about women is that they are most often quite humble and teachable once they get this. This then empowers them to pull back on their disrespectful reactions. And, again, we are not talking about respecting a man’s bad behavior but addressing all things as a dignified woman in a respectful manner. A dignified woman lets truth carry its own weight. Contempt does not cause a man to feel conviction in his soul. It does not motivate him to change in his heart. Some husbands really want closeness but live in fear of the wife’s tongue. Wives, read through the Song of Solomon. In courtship did your husband have some of these features? Did the change come about in him due to his failure to love you or due to an increase in your disrespect, which now makes this strong man afraid of closeness with you?

A woman sees closeness through the grid of love, while a man sees closeness through the grid of disrespect. A husband writes, “I do not attempt to get close in any way for fear I will not be received well or will cause a problem by trying to get close in the wrong way or at the wrong time. I don’t mean this in strictly a sexual way ... I am AFRAID to make any advances towards her at all.” She disrespected him so much that he distanced himself even though he did not want to remain apart emotionally. Contempt for a husband does not breed happiness, closeness, and love.

On the other hand, respect empowers a wife and motivates her husband. A wife wrote, “I will continue to pray and implement the changes that you prescribe in my life. As I mentioned, I already see them making a difference. There is a closeness beginning to develop between us, where there was only a cold distance before. And I am so thankful for this oasis in a desert of loneliness and hatred.”

Another said, “I truly believe that your clear teaching about what a man needs vs. what a woman needs has had and will have a profound impact on our marriage. I absolutely needed to respect him, so I would try and find any little thing and praise him for it, which in turn allowed him to grow more in that area, feel more needed, and now we feel closer than we ever have.”

Positivity

F. Learn to be positive and friendly again when inviting hugs, affection, and face-to-face time.

A wife said, “I realize that I haven’t been the best friend that he has needed and I’m trying to change that. Your book has humbled me and I want to be that friend to my husband and want that closeness that we used to share.”

To make an appeal for closeness in an unfriendly and negative manner will solicit a negative response, not a positive one. What if a wife were to say it this way: “You are the man, my man. I need to feel your strength. Hold me. Make me feel safe and secure. Your touch and affection fills my emotional love tank”? If you cannot say this face to face, write it in a note. Some men need to be positively informed about their ability to meet a need. This affirmation and appreciation motivates them to draw close.

Or say, “When I am with you each evening, just the two of us face to face, do you realize what I feel about that time with you? I feel energized by that time. I feel fulfilled. I feel connected with you, and you don’t even have to say a word. Just your listening to my heart releases my burdens. You have power, truly.” Again, some men have no idea that this is what a wife needs. They only think about closeness as her way of telling him what upsets her. For this reason, a wife should let her husband know that she wants to be face to face with him because she needs his presence, not because she sees him as having a problem about which they need to talk.

Why Are You Not Close?

G. Get at the root reason for your lack of interest in being close, which directly affects the lack of closeness!

A wife asks, “What if I do not want my husband’s closeness?” Typically when this is the case then either he did something immoral or she did. I strongly recommend getting counsel from a godly, wise person. If a wife does not want closeness, she should determine why and figure out God’s plan to move forward.

HER IMMORALITY

If a wife does something immoral, it is not just or honoring to her husband to keep him away from her. More than likely this will push him into alarm mode. He will panic and smother his wife. Listen to this husband: “What if your wife doesn’t like closeness with you and says she is burnt out on being around you? . . . She says that I smother her and that I am controlling and she is probably right, but it is because I do not want to lose her. I know she has been interested in another man.”

There you have it. This husband isn’t going away. Instead of letting your immoral behavior trigger in your husband a smothering approach to you to win you back and to keep you under toe, seek a godly, wise person to talk through the issue and come up with a plan, given you have a conviction about restoring your marriage. At present, an insecure, pushy, and stifling husband will not prove effective in your life. He needs guidance, and so do you, on ways to restore the marriage.

HIS IMMORALITY

If he did something immoral and hurt you so deeply that you now block him out of your life, you need to decide if your behavior accomplishes what God desires for you. I do not know what your husband did, but assuming you lean toward restoration of your marriage, you can only stiff-arm him so long. How long will you refuse to work on being close again? I cannot answer that, only you can.

You need the input of a godly, wise person on how to deal with your feelings of betrayal and rejection, and how you can move forward in light of your husband’s wrongdoing. You cannot shut him out forever. Keeping him at bay physically and emotionally will wear both of you out. Halting all closeness is not the answer long term. You need to talk through the strategy the Lord has for you, as best as you can discern this in counseling.

Here is the kind of upset a wife can have, and understandably so. And, it might not be a horrible immorality but mismanagement and mistreatment of her as a woman.

A wife writes, “Quite frankly, so far I need to switch the roles around, since my husband is the one who always needs the ‘closeness’ and I would rather be watching Dateline ... Before we married two years ago, he had a very small repair shop an hour away. It has since been cut down to no payroll, and I am doing the books and answering phones. He gets upset if I ask for a day off, and mentions to me all that needs to be done. Frankly, the business has only profited 2000.00 in the last 5 years, and isn’t worth going on!!! We have fought about this a lot, and I just about want to tell him to get out of the house and live at that stupid store if it is so important to him!”

Why does she not want closeness? She resents him for his inability to provide and for placing unloving and dishonoring demands on her. So, again, I urge you to turn to a godly, wise person on how to move forward. This is the root issue and there won’t be closeness until this is addressed and a plan created to move forward as God intends. You cannot say, “I want closeness” and then do everything in your power to prevent closeness.

God's Call

H. This may not be about closeness with your husband but about God’s call on you to be close to Him.

A wife wrote, “Although I’ve had some bad things in my life nothing has ever caused me to stop in my tracks and look to God for the answers, until losing my husband. I have found a closeness with God through all this.”

Sarah, my wife, is big on telling wives to find their deepest closeness with Christ. One reason is that most wives will outlive their husbands and then they will see how vital that spiritual discipline was.

Furthermore, wives tend to make their husbands the Christ figure and thus marginalize the real Christ from their lives. Sometimes the lack of closeness with a husband is a healthy reminder that no man can meet all of a woman’s emotional needs. I am not letting any man off from God’s call for him to cleave but making the point to the woman who expects her husband to do for her what Christ Himself expects to do in her life. I urge women to listen to my wife, Sarah, on this point.

Let me add one more thought for the wives: If you are hurt by your husband’s lack of closeness, is the Lord who loves you hurt by your lack of communion with Him? Is He using the lack of closeness with your husband as a wake-up call about your relationship with Him? God uses family to impart truth to us. For example, many dads learn about God’s love as their heavenly Father after they have a child. They suddenly realize, “God feels about me the way I feel about my child. Wow!” So, too, a wife who complains that her husband isn’t drawing near to her needs to ask, “Am I drawing near to God who commands me to draw near to Him in James 4:8?”

Don't Make Assumptions

I. Do not assume you are close when in fact you are not.

I know that sounds odd but hear what this wife said:

“I have been severely neglecting my husband physically for the last few years. I don’t want to leave a wrong impression—we were close in many ways, good friends, there’s no one I’d rather be with, etc., etc., and I know he’d say the same thing. However, something was missing, and it had been for a long time, but the last 3-4 years it got worse. The last six months, I knew things were definitely not right between us. We were connecting physically only infrequently, and I was using my dear sister’s death as an excuse, along with lingering, chronic health issues. But he’s such a dear, and was coping with it the best way he could, but deep down I knew things weren’t right. However, I simply didn’t have the energy to deal with another conversation. I was in denial about us and our closeness and connectivity. It was strange in a very weird way, as yet we would do so much together, have good times in/out of the house, and he wanted to be with me anywhere, anytime. He was very supportive in all ways with my health issues, grieving, etc. However, one night I asked him point blank about our physical relationship and to spare me, unfortunately, he lied. Even though I didn’t sense his answer was straight, I accepted it because I wanted to.”

Later, he opened up about his struggles and both of them broke down in humility before the Lord. Fortunately, they turned the corner on what could have been an ugly mess in their marriage. But her e-mail serves as a warning about presuming there is closeness when there is not. That does not mean pry. I only surface this as a piece of information to pray about. If a woman goes to her husband and yells, “What aren’t you telling me?” then she proves that she lives in fear and in contempt, which will rob her of true closeness.

I hope these suggestions prove beneficial to you. Think about the one thing I said that most spoke to your heart and begin there. Wives, you do have power to influence the heart of your husband. But let’s ask God to help. Would you join me in this prayer?

Lord Jesus, You know the longing of my heart to connect with my husband. I yearn to cleave as You designed a husband and wife to unite heart to heart. I pray that my husband would understand my needs, expectations, and motives. I pray that as I share my heart with him that I would do so in ways that honor and respect him. May he recognize that I need him. May I not speak in ways that cause him to feel that I intend to shame him. In all of this may I never forget drawing close to You. Your Word declares, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” In Jesus Name. Amen.

Please take a moment and view the video titled “What Can a Wife Do?” in the next step.