What no one seems to be addressing is that if a husband and wife are arguing about fishing time, the problem is not fishing.
I've heard it said here several times in this thread that we should take care of our responsibilities before we go fishing. What are those responsibilities? Providing enough money to put a roof over our family's head and food on the table? Cutting the grass? Fixing the toilet that overflows every time someone takes a dump?
We could meet all of those responsibilities if we lived in Mexico, fished El Salto every day and mailed home money to pay for them.
Our primary responsibility is not to be the provider. You can have a homeless family, doing the best they can, and the dad can be a great dad. Our primary responsibility is to be there. To develop a relationship with our wives and kids that can only be built because we have spent enough time with them to build the trust required.
How much time is that? A lot. I realized this way too late in my own marriage, but I'm glad I did.
Counseling is great, but only if husbands and wives want to change. If they don't, I agree it's a waste of time. But let's be honest: it's not the counseling that wastes the money, it's the refusal to change.
They have great advice to give, especially Christian counselors.
According to one survey, 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce. One of the primary reasons for this is that many of us, myself included, went into marriage asking "how can my wife meet my needs?" instead of "how can I meet hers"? What I discovered is that once I started asking the second question rather than the first, so did my wife. That's how it's supposed to work, and you never know if it will work until you try it.
Marriage isn't about a peaceful co-existence, she lets me do my thing and I let her do hers. It's about having a partner who you want to share everything with. With a self-centered approach to marriage, you might not get divorced, but you also won't enjoy full the benefits of a true marriage partnership.
That's how to "be a man". We don't make ourselves men by saying "I'm going to do what I want to do, take it or leave it." A two year-old does that, too.
My reasons for believing this way are (a) Scriptural and (b) from my own experience. I used to have a lot of the same problems described in this thread, and today I never knew marriage could be this good. But it was my change that helped my wife to change. Today every day's a great day.
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