[divider style=’centered’]
[thrive_progress_bar count=”1″ label0=”Course Progress” percentage0=”40″ color0=”blue”]
[thrive_text_block color=”light” headline=”Chapter Summary”]You already know that attraction is an important benefit of husbandly leadership, but did you know that attraction also enables better communication?[/thrive_text_block]
[divider style=’centered’]
[blank_space height=’3em’]
We are officially into the part of the course about communication. More specifically, it’s about communicating like a good husband and leader.
Where should we start? Unsurprisingly, the first thing we need to do is recognize the connection between attraction and communication.
Why You Need Attraction to Get Your Wife Back
We’ve already said multiple times that you need attraction to get your wife back. In the first chapters of this course, we hammered home that attraction is essential to getting your wife back. You’ll remember The Leadership Cycle all the way back from Chapter 1:
Notice the relationship between attraction and forgiveness. The reason we focus on this part of The Leadership Cycle is because this is the step that makes forgiveness easier. Attraction is what has the power to change how your wife feels about you and the marriage. Attraction is what will make her want to stay.
And as we’ve already established, women find leadership attractive.
Attraction is More Than Just Physical
One last reminder about attraction is that it’s much more than just physical. Attraction inside of marriage could be better described as magnetism. It’s when you genuinely like and respect your spouse as a person, not just as a physical body.
Two wrinkly old seniors who’ve been married for 50+ years are still genuinely attracted to each other. It’s more than just physical or sexual appeal… It’s about your personality and how your wife perceives you as a man. Attraction is when you feel more like yourself when you’re with your spouse than you do without. When your wife feels this way when she’s with you, that’s when you know she’s attracted to you.
At the start, she might call it friendship. She may say something like, “I like being your friend,” and that’s okay! If she likes being around you, with you, near you… That’s your goal right now.
Are you the man that your wife wants to be with?
That’s what we’re talking about when we say attraction.
So how do you bring that leadership-inspired attraction to your communication? How do you rekindle attraction when it’s vanished from your marriage?
Let’s start with some of the benefits of this type of attraction:
The Role of Attraction in Communication:
How Does Attraction Make Communication Easier?
How does attraction make communication easier?
Turns out, there are three key ways that attraction affects communication:
[thrive_text_block color=”light” headline=””]
[thrive_number_counter color=”blue” value=”1″ before=”” after=”. Attraction Creates a Desire for Communication” label=””]
Have you ever been to a bar on a Friday night? If so, you’ve probably seen single men there trying to start up conversations with single women.
Have you ever been so infatuated with a girl that you stayed up all night talking to her? Or spent hours on the phone?
Both of these examples show us that attraction has the power to make two people want to communicate.
It may seem like an obvious thing to say, but when your wife is attracted to you, she will want to hear your opinions and perspectives. She’ll want to know what you’re thinking. She’ll really care how you feel. And most importantly, she’ll want to share all those things with you about herself too.
This is also a good way to tell when you’re making progress as a leader. Since leadership causes attraction, and attraction causes a desire for communication, that means when your wife starts initiating conversations with you, you know you’re doing your job. In other words, your wife’s desire to communicate with you validates your leadership.
[/thrive_text_block]
[thrive_text_block color=”light” headline=””]
[thrive_number_counter color=”blue” value=”2″ before=”” after=”. Attraction Creates Cushion in Communication” label=””]
Another important thing attraction does is create a communication ‘cushion’.
What exactly is a communication cushion?
You could call it a margin of error. Basically, if your wife is attracted to you, then you can afford to be a worse communicator. Not all the time, of course, but you can afford to put your foot in your mouth sometimes without any permanent consequences. You can say the wrong thing at the wrong time without offending your wife, or at least without causing a huge fight.
You could NEVER do that while your marriage is on the rocks. When your wife is NOT attracted to you, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can spell the end of your marriage. That’s a severe worst-case scenario, but it’s true… Without attraction, your words can have major, permanent consequences that are very hard to repair.
Attraction is what makes your wife WANT to be with you. And when she wants to be with you, you have a much higher threshold of permissible mistakes.
Now, I’m not saying that you should take advantage of this ‘communication cushion’… I’m simply letting you know that it exists and that it makes communication easier, especially for men like me who aren’t very good at speaking our mind (which we’ll talk more about in the next chapter).
[/thrive_text_block]
[thrive_text_block color=”light” headline=””]
[thrive_number_counter color=”blue” value=”3″ before=”” after=”. Attraction Makes Communication Come More Naturally” label=””]
Do you remember when you and your wife first started dating?
Remember how you had an intangible ‘chemistry’; like every conversation seemed to flow naturally?
As a result of points #1 and #2 here (the desire for communication and the communication cushion), communication between two people who are attracted to each other always comes naturally. It may not be as smooth and exciting as those first few weeks or months dating your wife, but it should be just as natural.
Basically, when you and your wife are attracted to each other, and when you’re aware of the need to fan the flames of that attraction, communication won’t be something you have to think about… It’ll just happen. It’ll flow.
So, now that we know what attraction can do for your communication with your wife, let’s look at a couple examples that demonstrate these principles:
[/thrive_text_block]
Communication Example 1.
Two People Attracted to Each Other
To help you see the difference that attraction makes in communication, we’re going to look at two hypothetical examples. One example will be of a couple that’s attracted to each other, and the other is of a couple that’s not.
I want you to imagine the following scene:
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=””]
Imagine a man and a woman have just met, and sparks are flying. He’s handsome, she’s beautiful. They’re interested in the same things, and they can’t get enough of each other. It’s Friday night and they’re on their 5th date at a romantic French restaurant.
Close your eyes and imagine these two people have a conversation over a candlelit dinner… What does their communication look like? What’s happening in this scene?
At dinner, both of them are 100% engaged in the conversation. They’re looking into each other’s eyes, smiling and flirting. He’s attentive and charming, always looking for a way to make her laugh. She reaches out to touch his arm every now and then when he says something particularly sweet or funny. They’re so engaged with each other that they lose track of time. They talk about everything from their childhood to their favorite TV show to their career and dreams and aspirations. Anyone who tried to sit down with them would feel like a third wheel.
[/thrive_text_block]
Got it? Can you picture the conversation that these two lovebirds are having?
Can you feel how connected they are to each other?
Good, now let’s look at the opposite example…
Communication Example 2.
Two People Repulsed By Each Other
This time, our fantasy couple has just broken up. They dated for a few months and had a good run, but eventually they got into a fight and separated.
In this example, they’re going out to dinner to conclude their relationship… He needs to pick up a few articles of clothing he had left at her apartment, meanwhile she wants to see how badly he’s doing so she can feel better about herself.
What does this conversation look like? Probably something like this:
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=””]
Imagine this couple coldly greeting each other as they walk in together. They arrived in separate cars. You can feel the tension in the air. They’re not at a fancy restaurant this time… Just a crappy fast food joint. They both know it’ll be fast.
As they sit down, there are long moments of silence where neither person has anything to say. Anytime he says anything, even just placing his order, it annoys her. When she asks him a question, he thinks it’s stupid. Anyone who sat down with them probably wouldn’t feel like a third wheel – they’d feel like the ONLY wheel. Maintaining a conversation feels like pulling teeth.
This time, both he and she can’t wait to leave. He gets his clothes, they make small talk and exchange cold looks. Their relationship comes up for a moment, but she quickly says she doesn’t want to talk about it. Minutes feel like hours. They leave quickly after finishing their food, and neither one of them is happy with the conversation.
[/thrive_text_block]
In this example, nothing has changed physically about our handsome man or our beautiful woman. Physically, they are both attractive, and yet they are totally unattracted to each other. The difference it makes in their communication is enormous.
I’m willing to bet you’ve had a few conversations like this with your wife, where it feels like you can’t say anything right. In these moments, do you think your wife finds you attractive? Probably not.
These may not be the best examples, but I hope that you see the point I’m trying to make here:
Attraction alone can change the tide of communication between you and your wife.
When you’re both attracted to each other, you will WANT to communicate with each other, and it will come naturally and enjoyably.
When either one of you is unattracted to the other, communication becomes extremely difficult because there’s no incentive to make conversation worthwhile. If she doesn’t find you attractive, why would she care what you have to say?
So, where does that leave us? We need to rebuild attraction.
And how do we do that?
How Do You Rekindle Attraction?
Ah, here’s the big question…
What can you actually DO to rekindle attraction? If the attraction is missing from your marriage, how do you get it back?
We know that you need to regain leadership in order for your wife to be attracted to you, but how do you do that? What specific actions do need to take?
Unfortunately, there is no “one thing” you can do or say to reignite your wife’s attraction. If there were, trust me, I would’ve told you by now. I wish it were that easy.
How to rekindle attraction is a difficult question because the answer will be different for every man. The one common thread is that attraction always revolves around leadership. When you become more like a husbandly leader, your wife will become more attracted to you over time. So, there are three general areas that we’re going to work on in the next few chapters that will help you get where you need to go.
The three things you’ll learn to do in the next few chapters are:
- Talk the way that leaders talk
- Do the things that leaders do
- Think the way that leaders think
If you can pull off those three things, then you can rest easy knowing that you’re being the best husband you can be.
The “Original Attraction” Exercise
Click here to download the PDF worksheet for this exercise
At one point, your wife found you irresistibly attractive. After all, that’s why she married you!
Somewhere along the line, those things your wife found attractive about you either changed or disappeared. The goal of this exercise is to identify which traits you once had that your wife found attractive, and what you can do to get them back.
The purpose of this exercise is to see what might have changed between the start of your relationship and where you’re at today. Here’s what I want you to do:
[thrive_text_block color=”light” headline=””]
- Close your eyes and think back to your first date with your wife. Where did you go? What did you do? Describe your first date on a sheet of paper.[blank_space height=’3em’]
- Think about the person you were when you and your wife first started dating. Write down 5 traits you had back then that you think originally piqued your wife’s interest in you.[blank_space height=’3em’]
- Now think about what your wife learned about you throughout your courtship BEFORE you got married. In other words, you already know 5 obvious traits that piqued her interest… Write down 5 more ‘deep’ traits that she learned to appreciate about you during your courtship. These are personality traits that she didn’t recognize or appreciate until she got to know you better.[blank_space height=’3em’]
- Now think about the man you became during the problem years of your marriage. These could range from the past few months to the past few years. Identify 5 to 10 traits that defined you as a man during those times. These are probably traits that your wife finds unattractive, although they don’t have to be.[blank_space height=’3em’]
- Which of the traits from #2 and #3 that originally made you attractive to your wife are missing from the man you are today?[blank_space height=’3em’]
- As you’re thinking about these missing traits, try to figure out which ones didn’t exist when you and your wife started dating, and which ones simply took a while to come to the surface.
- What traits are you going to start developing in yourself as you try to repair your marriage? These don’t necessarily have to be traits that you had before; these can be new traits that you want to develop in yourself.
[/thrive_text_block]
You should now have a list of 15 to 20 character traits that all helped define you at one point in your life. 10 of these traits are positive, attractive traits, and 5 to 10 of them are negative, unattractive traits.
You should also have a good idea of which positive traits are missing, which negative traits need to be cleaned up, and what traits you’re going to try and develop in yourself as you move forward in your life and marriage.
If you want to rekindle attraction with your wife, a straightforward way to do that can be to get back some of those missing positive traits, and get rid of some of those newly developed negative traits.
One caveat with this exercise is that your goal is NOT to go back to the man that you were when you first started dating your wife. Change and growth are both natural and good things that happen as we and our relationships mature as we learn more about life and marriage. But, it’s still helpful to know where you started compared to where you are now, and I’m willing to bet that at the very least this exercise gave you a better idea of which traits you developed over time that might have driven your wife away from the marriage.
Attraction Isn’t Just Rebuilt with Words…
It’s Rebuilt Through Actions
If you’re ready to start taking action, a good starting point is to focus on the areas of husbandly leadership we talked about in Chapter 6. Work on getting your numbers up on your Marriage Scale. When your wife sees you taking yourself and your role in the marriage more seriously, she’ll naturally find you more attractive.
In the meantime, do your best to start communicating like a leader, which is what we will spend the rest of this second part learning how to do.
This chapter is important because it sets the foundation for how you’ll interact with your wife. And, now you know why it’s been so hard to communicate with her – there’s a lack of attraction!
[thrive_text_block color=”note” headline=”Key Takeaways from Chapter 8:”]
- Attraction plays a very important role in communication – it’s what creates a desire for conversation.
- When your wife is attracted to you, communication is easier, more enjoyable and more forgiving. You can afford to make mistakes and your wife will still care about what you have to say.
- When your wife is unattracted to you, communication will be extremely difficult. It’ll feel like you can’t say anything right. Your words will have bigger consequences.
- Attraction takes time to rebuild, and it’s rebuilt through both actions and words. Knowing how to communicate effectively will enable you to say things that matter to your wife, and will help you come off as a leader.
[thrive_link color=’blue’ link=’https://inside.husbandhelphaven.com/chapter-9-speaking-your-mind-gently-with-confidence/’ target=’_self’ size=’big’ align=’aligncenter’]Go to Chapter 9. Speaking Your Mind Gently With Confidence[/thrive_link]
[/thrive_text_block]