How to Make Your Wife Feel Loved and Want to Stay

Women who don’t feel loved eventually fall out of love and leave their husbands. Learning how to make her feel loved now can prevent a world of hurt later.

I work with many men who want to win their wives back. In most cases, they loved their wives but did a poor job of making their wives feel loved. They expected their wives to infer their love for them because they worked hard, gave them money, or helped with the kids.

Let me tell you, if your wife has to figure out whether you love her or not, you are not showing it plainly enough. The same can be said for your children or friends.

Caring for your wife vs. loving your wife

Taking care of your wife is an important part of being a good husband, just as taking care of your children is an important part of being a good parent. But it is not enough to make her or your kids feel loved. People who grow up learning that all you have to do to be a good husband is to take care of your wife often get a rude awakening. Many times their wives leave them for a man who makes them feel loved.

I can recognize a man who has a love-is-helping mindset when he says things like:

• I didn’t realize I needed to date my wife,
• I didn’t realize I needed to spend one on one time with my wife,
• I didn’t realize I needed to help my wife to enjoy making love to me,
• I didn’t realize I needed to make my wife feel like she was a priority,
• I didn’t realize that I needed to validate my wife.

Such men are focused on the requirements. They probably spend their whole lives making lists of things they need to do and then focus on getting those things done. Their lives become one giant to-do list. Such men don’t make their wives feel loved. Their wives feel like they are just part of the to do list.

When their wives are leaving them with complaints about not feeling loved or feeling like a priority, these men will ask:

• Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to go out on dates?
• Why didn’t you tell me you needed more one on one time?
• Why didn’t you tell me you wanted me to make you feel important?

Men who have loving feelings toward their wives:

• Naturally want to date their wives,
• Naturally want to spend quality time with them,
• Naturally make them feel important.

The same goes for their children, other family members, and friends. If a man’s friends need to tell him to make them feel important, or that they want to spend time together, they will rightly conclude that he doesn’t already have a desire to do that. They are his burdens rather than his blessings.

When their wives are leaving them or having an affair, such men will often double down on the amount of help they are providing or will suddenly seek to make up for all the actions they didn’t realize their wives needed. This catch-up-strategy doesn’t work, because it also comes off as an obligation. They come too late to be seen as genuine.

We can’t compensate for the loving things we should have done by doing them once the other person’s love for us has been lost.

It is possible to restore a relationship from this damaged point and I have been helping men to do that for many years. It typically requires a complete restart of the relationship and lots of work. It’s like driving your car until it falls completely apart. You can’t just get a tune up at that point. You will need a complete engine rebuild.

Allow me to give you guidance on keeping your marriage tuned up by helping your wife, and possibly others as well, to feel loved by you, so that you won’t have to get to that total rebuild point.

You need to express your love with both words and actions.

Do not leave it for your wife to figure out. Although your wife needs more than words to know that you love her, words are still important. If you wait too long between saying loving things, you will feel like you need to say very extreme poetic things to compensate for the amount of time that has passed.

Relationships are best maintained by regular feeding rather than periods of starvation followed by periods of gorging.

This is true for both words and actions. You can’t compensate for a lack of weekly dating by annual trips to Hawaii. You can’t compensate for doing only business talk with your wife every day by giving her a Hallmark card on Valentine’s Day. For love to thrive, the relationship must be fed every day with those we live with.

You need to focus on the right goals

Your wife is in her relationship with you because she wants to be in it. Once she no longer wants to be, her love for you will shut off and like a rocket out of fuel your relationship will start to fall. The fall will be slow at first, but gradually get faster until it crashes. Many men start working with me when their relationship is crashing. You can be wiser than them.

Since your wife is in your relationship because she wants to be, your goals should be to help your wife to enjoy her relationship with you. As long as you do that, she will be motivated to cooperate with you, spend time with you, have sex with you, and keep you. If instead, you see your wife mainly as someone who exists to help you pay bills, help you to take care of the kids, or help you to have orgasm, you will have made your relationship a job for your wife. This means that she will stop enjoying it.

If you were single and attracted to a particular woman, how would you need to behave with her to make her desire to be with you? Take a moment and think about that. However you would do that is the same way you need to behave with your wife if you want her to desire you. Since many men seem to have no skills for connecting with women, let me offer you some behaviors that work:

• smiling
• being relaxed and easy going
• being friendly
• complimenting
• sharing similar interests
• agreeing with her ideas
• empathizing with her feelings
• talking nicely about her friends and family
• making her feel skillful, attractive, and talented
• using a soft voice
• being a good listener
• occasionally giving her a small gift
• leaving her occasional notes saying something nice about her

Your job as a husband is to make your wife feel that you think she is wonderful. It is not to train her to be wonderful. No matter how unattractive your wife is, you need to make her feel attractive–not give her beauty tips. No matter how stupid your wife is, you need to make her feel smart–not try to educate her. No matter how little ability your wife has, you need to make her feel capable.

Imagine someone asked your wife, Does your husband think you are attractive? Does your husband think you are intelligent? Does your husband think you are a good lover? Does your husband think you are a good mother? and so forth. For any questions that you think she would answer negatively, that is where you need to work.

While we are on the subject, make sure you also do not criticize your wife to others. Never make your wife the butt of your jokes. And, never allow anyone to talk badly about your wife, whether it is your kids or your best friend. They can think whatever they want, but they don’t get to say that to you.

Express your love in a soft voice

Two behaviors clearly show how close a relationship is. One is how close people stand together in a quiet room, and the other is how soft their voices are when they talk to each other. The most intimate would be holding each other and whispering. The most distant would be standing far apart and shouting. People should be able to know by observing these two things how you love your wife. And, if other people can tell, your wife can certainly tell as well.

When is the last time you whispered something nice to your wife?

Some practice ideas for expressing your love

Unlike marriage counselors, I am not an advocate of working together on your relationship with your wife. Instead, I advocate that you be an attractive man she enjoys being with. That’s the real way to have a good relationship with her or anyone else.

1.  Tell her what attracted you to her in the first place.

Why she was so special. It does not matter if it was 50 years ago. Women don’t separate the past from the present. It all gets mixed together in their thinking and feeling. If you have missed opportunities to express your love and appreciation before, you can still do it now for things in the past. Make sure you don’t make it sound like you are complaining about the way she is now.

Example: I have always been attracted to you.

Not: You used to be really good looking and that was why I wanted to be with you.

2.  Tell your wife about the good things that have come about in your life because of her.

That will help her to feel valued. A woman will love you more for what you appreciate that she does for you, than she will for what you do for her. You may work your tail off so that you can take care of her, but she may just attribute that to your love for your job, or your need to feel important. You can make her feel important most, not by taking care of her, but by appreciating her.

Stop trying to earn her appreciation and start showing her more appreciation.

3.  Tell your wife about the good qualities in her that are relatively hard to find in other people.

Everybody has parts of themselves that they are proud of. When you tell people how much you admire something that they are proud of, it increases their attraction for you.You can give compliments about a dozen other things that they don’t care much about and it won’t make any difference. What is your wife proud of about herself? Make her feel special by emphasizing your joy or your pride in that also.

The best compliments are always the things people like best about themselves.

4.  Take some time to think about what you would miss if you lost your wife

Don’t let her go to the grave or the divorce court without having heard that from you while you are together. This question is a good self-test to see just how much you do love your wife. If you can’t think of anything, it is only a matter of time before you lose her. You don’t need to get morbid. Just say something like, “Honey, if I ever lost you, every day I would miss your (e.g. smiling face).”

Don’t make this into a joke. A joke is good for a laugh. But, sincere loving expression, lasts much longer.

5.  Tell her how important she is for your dreams for the future

Just as with the past, she wants to know that you think about a future with her, and that she is important for your future. Even if your relationship is not so good now, you can tell her about the companionship, financial success, great sex, travel, and so forth that you want to have with her. Don’t just keep working for that secretly and plan to surprise her with it someday. She may be gone before you are able to do that.

Be persistent and gradual in your changes

You may realize that you have not been doing a good job of making your wife feel loved. It may motivate you to suddenly turn on the charm and wow her. If your relationship is already strong, that may work. But, if your relationship is somewhat distant, you had better do this gradually.

The greater the difference between your expression of love and her feelings of love, the more resistance you will get. This is why pursuit does not work as a method of reconciling. Gradually help her to feel more loved by you. Don’t try to revive her with a sudden 20,000 volt love charge.

If your wife has already rejected you or moved out

If you are learning this and your wife has recently left you or rejected you, I encourage you NOT to say these things to her. When women leave, they want to feel good about their choice. So, if you try to express your love at that time, they will just reject you. Also, they will see what you are doing as selfishly trying to convince them to stay in a bad situation. It will repulse them rather than attract them.

There are very helpful things you can do to reconcile, but expressing your love in these ways will need to wait until she can enjoy these expressions of love from you. At this point, reconciling requires a step by step approach beginning with just helping her to feel relaxed with you. Showing her love is several steps down the list. If you would like to learn more about the reconciling approach, I invite you to view the Re-Connections Coaching Package at coachjackito.com.

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