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criticism. They have an intimate emotional connection. They could be away from each other for weeks due to work and come back and pick up a conversation right where they left off. They have a healthy and satisfying sex life. Their time together is as comfortable as their feet in a favorite pair of slippers on a cold winter night. They curl up in each other’s arms, knowing they are loved, cared for, respected, appreciated, and listened to. Words don’t even need to be exchanged all the time, because both husband and wife understand each other.
    Marriage, at its core, is all about respect for the other person—and respect goes both ways. But today’s culture disses men at every turn. Men don’t get respect from anyone, let alone their wives. Sitcoms portray them as dolts who are so inept that they can’t figure anything out, as buffoons who think through their fly. Actresses announce, “I’m going to have a child,” but there’s no mention of a father, a husband. The pervasive mentality in today’s society is: “Who needs a man? They’re good for nothing!” So that means men are left hanging out there, feeling they’re not respected, not needed, and certainly not important.
    Does such a mentality drive couples together or apart? Just look at the rising divorce statistics, and you’ll have a clue. Today one out of two marriages ends in divorce, and the average marriage lasts only seven years. Lest you think your marriage couldn’t be at risk because “we are deeply, deeply in love—we’d never get a divorce,” that’s exactly what other couples said—only seven years before they called their separate lawyers and started divorce proceedings.
    So what’s so different about you? How are you going to be different in order to keep your marriage together? To keep your husband in your bed rather than someone else’s? To have a fulfilling, exciting, satisfying marriage that will stay that way until death do you part?
    I can’t count the number of times women have said to me, “But, Dr. Leman, I don’t want to lose myself in marriage. I mean, I’m still who I am. I’m just married. I don’t want to lose my identity.” This is what I call the “married single’s lifestyle.” You’re married, but you would never know it, except for the piece of paper that says you and your husband can now have sex legally. But you don’t have an intimate connection, emotional vulnerability, or relational transparency because you’re too concerned about “not losing yourself.”
    Marriage, at its core, is all about respect for the other person—and respect goes both ways.
    Interestingly, these women come into my counseling office because their marriages are in trouble. They lay out their problems, then say, “I want my husband to appreciate me for the woman I am—for my intellect, my creativity, etc., not just for my body or what I can do for him.” As we talk further, I make some suggestions about ways they might want to interact differently with their husbands at home. Invariably, these women will respond, “You’ve got to be kidding. Please my husband? Now why would I want to do that?”
    “Well then,” my response is, “why would he want to please you?”
    You see how it works, don’t you? In a democratic society, if you have a right to put me down, then I have a right to put you down. If you don’t feel like pleasing me, then I don’t have to please you.
    That’s a recipe for marital disaster. If you’re a person of faith, don’t think you’re immune. Ironically, the divorce percentage is even higher for people of faith, according to the Barna organization. 14 So many couples today are living his-and-her marriages. Like his-and-her towels that look nice hanging up in the bathroom, that might work for a while. But give it a few years, and those towels start to look a little shabby. They start unraveling. So too do his-and-her marriages. The partners are so used to doing everything on their own that