Creating the Intimate Connection: The Basics to Emotional Intimacy

The good husband pays a high emotional price for having to win or always be right in his marriage. The aggressive behavior that works so well for him in his pursuit of money may alienate his wife. If someone has to be right, then someone else must be wrong. If someone wins, then someone else loses. In this case, the someone who loses is usually the

Good husbands can find a variety of excuses for not talking to their wives about their jobs. I often hear husbands say they don’t want their wives to worry. On the surface, this seems like a thoughtful gesture, but when it is further explored, most couples discover that the good husband is really following that part of his marriage fantasy which te

The good husband’s fantasy that he shouldn’t be dependent on others cannot help but lower his sense of self-esteem. The good husband will eventually find himself stuck in a double bind. He believes he must never be weak, and he sees any dependency as a weakness. At the same time, he feels tremendous stress at having always to be

Again and again, I have watched men try to live up to these goals— sometimes with tragic results. Men succeed in their role as good husbands to varying degrees, but the cost to them as human beings is almost always high, both physically and psychologically. The more the man tries to fulfill his prescribed good-husband role, the less and less he kno

When the American Dream is taken to its outer limits, there is often a kind of existential breakdown among men who have followed the good-husband fantasy to the letter and have gotten to the top of

Her resentment quickly surfaces in the marriage since she wants to be treated as a capable adult by her husband. The man who doesn’t recognize this, and who persists in his good-husband, head-of-the-household role, is well on his way to the divorce court.

The good husband is often a person who never learned how to take care of himself emotionally. He generally expects a woman to do this for him—his mother, his girlfriend, or his wife. She is there as his emotional security blanket, providing security that he seldom acknowledges. Indeed, he rarely, if ever, expresses any appreciation for her emotiona

At this point, another irony enters the picture. Because having more things is not what she ultimately needs to make her feel better, the wife becomes disturbed by her husband’s inability to help her. Although she will not be aware of it if she is playing her good-wife role as it is supposed to be played, the source of her anger lies not in her hus

part.” The only problem with this noble viewpoint is that it is not realistic. It is almost impossible to be responsible for another person’s feelings and behavior. Everyone has normal ups and downs, but when his wife is on a down cycle the white-knight character is engaged in the good husband and sets out to rescue her. She may not have ever reque

recognition, or an acknowledgment, of her feelings.