It might be your fault

How men's abdication of their God-given leadership roles blows up their marriages

One of my buddies going through the super-fun-time-marriage-demolition asked me recently if he had done anything to cause his wife’s behavior.

I don’t know his situation very well, but by the law of averages and the authority of anecdotal experience, I thought he probably had done something. Rare is the blameless warrior poet…

I tried drafting several responses. I skirted all the issues, rhetorically fist-bumped him, gave some colorful observations about some wives’ entitlement problems and… I deleted every draft.

“Yes,” I finally told him. “You definitely screwed up your marriage.”

I softened the blow by pointing out two things:

1. So did I. So does every man at some point.

2. While we have to take ownership of our own failures, it IS a fact that most of us—men and women—are given a bunch of fairy dust and pink-hued hyperbole about marriage. It’s like trying to build a McLaren F1 with a two-year-old’s rendering of a car.