I love my husband and try to encourage him in his work and also provide the physical enjoyment a marriage is suppose to have.  I realize I am not perfect and have made mistakes, but I make apologies when I err and ask for forgiveness. He doesn't say I love you back to me when I tell him I love him.  That hurts!  Please help me know what is going on in my husband's mind that he can't show love back to me. How do I show respect to a man like this?  I want to do what is right in God's eyes and love him unconditionally. ~ Confused

Dear Confused:

What is painfully absent from your note is any sense of mutual giving. You are working diligently to meet his needs, but I see no mention of him trying to meet yours. While it is certainly true that you are to respect him, he is also to respect you.

Subsequently, like many marriages, yours is out of balance. It is time to create a crisis—in other words, it’s time to quit doing what you’ve always done because you’re going to get what you’ve always gotten, and that’s not much.

What does it mean to create a crisis? This is a principle we teach at The Marriage Recovery Center. Creating a crisis means doing things differently. It means interrupting troubling, dysfunctional patterns, in favor of healthier ways of relating. Here are some steps to creating a healthy crisis:

1. Take inventory of your relationship as it is right now. Note specifically how your husband behaves and how you tend to react to it.

2. Note the patterns. Prepare yourself to stop acting in the predictable ways, getting the same old predictable responses.

3. Plan your crisis. What must change? What ultimatum will you make, and what will the consequences if the changes you seek do not happen.

4. Be prayed up. Seek God’s wisdom for ways for you to begin to act differently. Only move forward as you sense God’s leading.

5. Seek Godly support from friends who will advise and assist you with your decisions. You’ll need friends and family to help sustain you as you create change.

6. Seek Godly counsel. Find a good, professional counselor who will assist you in outlining a plan for appropriate changes. Find someone you can relate to, but who will also tell you the truth about yourself and your husband. Insist that your husband join you in couples counseling.

7. Set healthy boundaries. Insist with your husband that a little change is not enough. Let him know, clearly, caringly, concisely, how you expect to be treated. Let him know you are willing to treat him the same way.

8. Stick with your plan. Let him know you refuse to be mistreated, and if he chooses to mistreat you, you will not tolerate it. If necessary, be prepared to leave for a short time to let him know you are serious about the changes you want incorporated into your marriage.