Communication will help you understand what is underneath your husband’s behavior.
If he doesn’t have an immediate answer to that question, that’s okay. Guys often need some time to process things. You might learn more over time, anyway—and be better able to convey that you’re serious about taking some of the pressure off. Maybe he’s in a particularly dicey time at work and would simply feel better if your household had a spending freeze for a while. Or maybe he really wants to provide for those things he sees as “extras” but doesn’t feel adequate to the task, and confesses that it really would help with certain expenses if you got a part-time or seasonal job.
You won’t know what the answer is until you sit down and talk about it. But it will make all the difference to talk about it with a compassion for the insecurity that you can’t see, that may be hiding underneath the drive-you-nuts behaviors that you can see!
Want to know more about navigating conversations about money and marriage? Check out my latest curriculum, “Men, Women, & Money.”
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Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).
Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.
Visit www.shaunti.com for more.
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