I don’t feel like I have enough support from my husband at home. How do I address this with him?

I really appreciate this question because so much of life in the day in and day out happens on the fly. How easy is it to just air our complaints in the moment or voice frustrations as we feel them rising in us? but this wife is doing something different. She is seeking to be thoughtful about how to approach her husband in the midst of feeling that she needs more support from him at home. So how can she address this with him? My first suggestion would be to prepare for this conversation. We are anticipating that this will be somewhat of a hard conversation because it's coming from a place of hardship that she is feeling between them. Something I advise couples to do and, you might have heard it too somewhere, is the idea of, How can I reveal myself and resist exposing my spouse? What I mean by that is sometimes we can unhelpfully, in conflict, try to expose the sin or weakness that we see in our spouse. Along with that, we are tempted to make accusations or be uncharitable or unkind in our assessments of them. So I’d advise this wife to be aware of this potential temptation because if you are feeling that you don't have enough support at home, you may already be frustrated or discouraged or angry at your spouse, and with that frustration you are more susceptible to the temptation of trying to expose what you see as his failures.

Instead, what can you reveal about yourself? How can you be vulnerable about your experience? To answer that, consider what it has been like for you to function without the support from him that you know would help you. How would you describe what that is like? Are you overwhelmed, anxious, not getting enough sleep, stretched too thin? So be prepared to come to him ready to reveal something about yourself. And then from there to be concrete about what he could do to help alleviate some of the experience you have described, you can identify what would be helpful to you, what would bless you. So again, this is something you can think about before you have this conversation, but I think being concrete with your husband in terms of what changes you would like to ask him to make will be helpful to him. To say something like, “I need more support” could be interpreted all kinds of ways. So what could help you, what can he do specifically that would bless you and relieve the burdens you’re carrying? For example, it would really help me if you take the kids upstairs after dinner and start them with baths so I can have a few minutes of quiet after dinner. That’s specific. That’s concrete. And then ask him, Is that something you think you could do? So you're not demanding a change; you are asking him a question, and in so doing making space in the conversation for him to weigh if your concrete request is one that he can realistically commit to. So in your preparation, come ready to reveal yourself, and come ready to make concrete requests for the kind of help you would like.

I’ll make a final comment, which is just that seasons of life change and with that needs and levels and kinds of support that we are looking for from our spouse also change. And so I encourage proactive, ongoing communication about this question of, How can we give each other support right now in this particular season of life? That is just a loving, considerate question to ask each other, one that shows a willingness to serve and a genuine care for your spouse’s experience. 

So these conversations are not a one-and-done kind of conversation but ones that can be regular check-ins that show that continual interest from each of you. Ones where you are showing to one another that you care to know how you can be a blessing, how you can be a support, how you can be an encouragement to your spouse right now in the season that you are currently in. So for anyone watching this video, I encourage you today to go to your spouse and ask them, “How can I be a support and a blessing to you right now in what you are facing here at home and at work?”