Wisdom From a 76-year-old Pastor and Marriage Counselor

I spoke to a 76-year-old man who had been a minister and marriage counselor for 45 years. He told me that during his first 12 years of counseling, he believed the men were the problem in every case. Then one day he changed his approach. He began every first session by asking, “How is your relationship with your spouse?” He would ask the husband first, then the wife.

What he discovered was eye-opening. The husbands almost always answered, “Everything is fine.” The wives, on the other hand, would unload a laundry list of every fault they could pin on their husbands, including things neither of them could control.

He noticed how often the wives used the word “enough” in their complaints: “He doesn’t love me enough.” “He doesn’t spend enough time with the kids.” “He doesn’t give me enough attention.”

When he asked, “What is enough?” the answer was almost always, “More than he is doing now.” When he pressed them for a solution, the majority answered, “Divorce.”

Think about that. To them, the solution to “not enough time with the kids” was to permanently remove the father from the home.