As a rule, people don’t generally enjoy pain. Guys, as a rule, generally don’t like asking for advice. Guys, also, are often clueless when their marriage needs work (or, they pretend it doesn’t). Men, if you want the very best marriage you can get, you’ve got to suck it up and do this one thing:
You have to ask your wife: How am I doing?
Gents, when you were in high school did you play that game where you asked another guy to punch you in the arm? The two of you would wail on each other until there was so much pain and bruising that one of you would finally give up. This is not that. You might be inviting a bit of pain (some of you might get more than others). You might get your feelings hurt. But instead of walking away with nothing but pain and bruising, when you ask your wife how you measure up as a husband, you walk away with a terrific opportunity to have a great relationship.
I started doing this several years ago during my mid-year reset. Aaron Walker at View From The Top leads mastermind groups for men. I’d been following his work for a while and before my 2019 Reset I shot him an email and asked him: what do you think is the most important resource I can take with me on my retreat? He graciously shot back an email with a link to his “Spouse Survey“. I downloaded and printed the PDF and looked over the questions. They were intimidating: “What am I doing that you would like me to stop?” “What should I be doing with our children?” “How can I help you more?”
I handed the printout to my wife and she was surprised. But, perhaps, not as surprised as I was when she asked me if I would fill out a survey about her.
Every year since then we take two fresh copies, fill them out again, and present them to each other. I won’t lie: it’s extremely intimate and vulnerable. It takes a long time to fill out, and a really long time to discuss. But as you tackle the issues over time, the process actually gets easier. It’s great to see the progress we’ve made over previous years, and how – as our circumstances in life have changed – we need to change the way we relate to each other.
One final note on the Spouse Survey. Filling out the survey and then putting it in a drawer does nothing for you. I have a reminder on my calendar every Monday morning that tells me to pull out my wife’s survey and review it. That way I can start my week aiming for the relationship we both want. You have to aim in order to get to the destination you want to go.
You don’t have to use Aaron’s survey, but you do need to have a way to regularly ask your wife the question “How am I doing?” and be humble enough to take the criticism and turn it into positive action.