The Good Guy She Doesn’t Desire

I’ve been coaching couples for a few years now, and there’s a pattern I’m seeing more and more that’s honestly breaking my heart. It’s when husbands who genuinely see themselves as good men – and often they really are – become completely invalidating when their wives try to share how they experience them or their relationship.

Let me paint you a picture. Sarah comes to me frustrated because every time she tries to talk to her husband Mike about feeling disconnected, he immediately gets defensive. “I work hard for this family,” he says. “I don’t drink, I don’t cheat, I go to church, I help with the kids. What more do you want?” And then he spends the next hour trying to convince Sarah that she’s wrong about her own experience.

Or there’s Mary, who told her husband that when he corrects her in front of the kids, it makes her feel small. His response? “That’s ridiculous. I wasn’t correcting you, I was just adding information. You’re being too sensitive. I would never try to make you feel small – you know I love you.”

Notice what’s happening here? These men aren’t bad guys. They’re not abusive monsters. But they cannot tolerate any information that contradicts their self-image as a good husband. And in their desperation to maintain that image, they invalidate their wife’s experience entirely.

Why This Happens

This pattern comes from men who have built their entire identity around being the good guy – the provider, the protector, the righteous husband. And that identity feels so central to who they are that any suggestion they might have hurt their wife, even unintentionally, feels like a threat to their very sense of self.

Think about it – if you’ve spent your whole life being told you’re a good man, if you pride yourself on not being like “those other guys” who cheat or abuse or abandon their families, who don’t help around the house, who ignore their kids, who spend every weekend golfing while their wives handle everything, who never listen or show affection, then hearing your wife say she feels hurt doesn’t just feel like criticism. It feels like an attack on your entire identity.

I see this especially with men who grew up in homes where they watched their mothers suffer at the hands of truly problematic fathers. These men have made a promise to themselves: “I will never be like him.” So when their wife expresses pain or frustration, instead of seeing it as information about her experience, they hear it as an accusation that they’re just like the man they’ve spent their life trying not to become.

And in our church culture, this gets even more complicated. We have these beautiful teachings about being righteous priesthood holders, about leading our families with love and patience, about being providers and protectors. But sometimes the cultural messaging becomes so focused on being “different from the world” that men start to see themselves as automatically good husbands just because they hold the priesthood, pay tithing, and don’t engage in obvious sins. Men get praised for showing up to church with their families, for not drinking or swearing, for reading scriptures together. And while those things are wonderful, they’re really just the foundation – not the finish line of being a great husband.

But here’s the thing – men’s ego’s desperate need to maintain this “good guy” image is actually turning them into the very thing they fear becoming: a husband who dismisses his wife’s feelings and makes her feel unheard and invalidated.

The Stories That Break My Heart

Let me tell you about David and Lisa. Lisa came to me after fifteen years of marriage feeling completely invisible. She described how every conversation about their relationship turned into David defending himself and explaining why her feelings were wrong.

“When I told him I felt lonely in our marriage,” she said, “he pulled out his calendar and showed me all the date nights he’d planned in the past six months. When I said I felt like he doesn’t really see me, he listed everything he does for me. When I said I wanted more emotional connection, he reminded me that he tells me he loves me every day.”

David wasn’t trying to be dismissive. In his mind, he was presenting evidence that he was, in fact, a good husband. But what Lisa needed wasn’t a defense of his goodness – she needed him to simply hear her and validate her experience.

Or take Mark and Chloe. Chloe finally worked up the courage to tell Mark that when he looks at his phone during conversations, it makes her feel unimportant. Mark’s immediate response was to explain that he was just quickly checking work emails because he’s dedicated to providing for the family. Then he spent twenty minutes detailing all the ways he shows Chloe she’s important to him.

Chloe left that conversation feeling worse than when she started. Not only did she still feel unheard about the phone issue, but now she also felt guilty for bringing it up because clearly Mark was already doing so much for her.

What Husbands Need to Do

If you’re a husband recognizing yourself in these stories, I need you to hear me: Your wife’s experience of you is not an attack on your character. It’s information. Valuable, precious information about how to love her better.

First, you need to get honest about your ego. That desperate need to be seen as the good guy? It’s actually preventing you from becoming the great husband you want to be. When your wife shares something difficult with you, your first instinct might be to defend yourself, but I’m asking you to do something much harder: listen first.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. When your wife says, “When you interrupt me, it makes me feel like what I’m saying doesn’t matter,” resist the urge to explain that you weren’t really interrupting or that you do value what she says. Instead, try this: “I can see that my interrupting hurts you. I don’t want you to feel like what you say doesn’t matter because it absolutely does. Can you help me understand more about how this affects you?”

Notice the difference? In the second response, you’re not defending your goodness – you’re demonstrating it by prioritizing her experience over your ego.

Second, you need to understand the crucial difference between intention and impact. Your intention might have been completely innocent – maybe you were just trying to be helpful when you offered that suggestion, or maybe you were just tired when you gave that short response. But here’s what matters: the impact on your wife. Just because you didn’t intend to hurt her doesn’t mean she wasn’t hurt.

Think of it this way – if you accidentally step on someone’s foot, you don’t stand there arguing that it shouldn’t hurt because you didn’t mean to do it. You apologize and you’re more careful where you step. The same principle applies in marriage. When your wife tells you something you did had a negative impact on her, your response shouldn’t be “But I didn’t mean it that way.” It should be “I’m sorry that hurt you. Help me understand so I can do better.”

Third, learn to validate her perspective even when you don’t agree with it or when it doesn’t match your intentions. Her perspective is valid simply because it’s hers. She’s not making it up, she’s not being overly sensitive, and she’s not wrong about her own experience. You can simultaneously believe that your intentions were good AND validate that her experience was painful.

Here’s what validation sounds like: “I can see that when I suggested a different way to handle the kids’ bedtime, it felt like I was criticizing your parenting. That wasn’t my intention, but I understand that’s how it landed for you, and I’m sorry it felt that way.” Notice how you’re not admitting fault or agreeing that you were actually being critical – you’re simply acknowledging her experience as real and valid.

Or try this: “When you say that my tone sounded dismissive during our conversation about the budget, I believe you. I wasn’t trying to be dismissive, but clearly something in my tone came across that way to you. Can you help me understand what that felt like so I can be more aware of it?”

Fourth, expand your definition of being a good husband. Being a good husband isn’t just about not being a bad one. It’s not enough to not cheat, not abuse, not abandon. And it’s not enough to just work hard and provide financially for your family while being emotionally absent.

I see this all the time – men who think that because they’re putting in long hours at work, bringing home a paycheck, and keeping a roof over everyone’s head, they’re automatically good husbands. “I work sixty hours a week for this family,” they say. “I’m doing everything I can to provide for them.” And yes, financial provision is important and I respect the sacrifice that takes.

But here’s what these men often don’t realize: their wives and children don’t just need their paychecks – they need them. They need your emotional presence, your attention, your ability to connect with them when you are home. You can be the hardest worker and the most generous provider, but if you’re checked out emotionally, if you come home exhausted and have nothing left to give relationally, if you’re physically present but mentally absent, your family is still going to feel abandoned by you.

Being a good husband means actively creating safety for your wife to share her truth with you, even when that truth is uncomfortable. It means being emotionally present and available, not just financially responsible.

I worked with a man named Chris who had a breakthrough when he realized that his wife’s criticism wasn’t evidence of his failure – it was evidence of her trust. “She’s telling me this because she believes our marriage is worth fighting for,” he said. “If she’d given up on me, she wouldn’t bother trying to help me see these blind spots.”

Fifth, practice curiosity over defensiveness. When your wife shares something difficult, get curious about her experience instead of immediately jumping to defend your intentions. Ask questions like, “Can you help me understand how that felt for you?” or “What would it look like if I handled that differently?” or “When this happens, what do you need from me in that moment?”

Now, before we go any further, I need to address something crucial: this is not a checklist. I know how tempting it is to turn this into a formula – “If I validate her feelings three times this week, ask curious questions instead of defending myself, and remember to acknowledge impact versus intention, then she’ll see what a good husband I am and want to have sex with me.”

Stop right there. That transactional thinking is exactly the problem we’re trying to solve. You cannot check these boxes to earn your wife’s sexual desire or admiration. You cannot follow a formula to make her see you as the good guy. When you approach these tools with that mindset, you’re still making it all about you – about getting the recognition, the sex, the appreciation that you think you deserve as a good husband.

Your wife can sense when your validation is genuine versus when you’re just following a script to get something from her. Real change happens when you do these things because you genuinely care about her experience, not because you’re trying to get a specific outcome. The irony is that when men stop trying to earn their wife’s desire and start genuinely prioritizing her emotional safety, that’s often when real intimacy and passion actually flourish.

Remember, you can be a good man with good intentions and still have a negative impact on your wife sometimes. That doesn’t make you a terrible husband – it makes you human. But how you respond when she tells you about that impact? That’s what determines whether you become the exceptional husband you’re capable of being.

What Wives Can Do

Now, wives, I know how exhausting it is to have your experience constantly invalidated. You’ve probably started to doubt yourself, wondering if maybe you are being too sensitive or asking for too much. Let me be clear: you’re not.

Your job here is to bring more honesty into your marriage, even when it’s uncomfortable. That means being solid in yourself and your own experience, regardless of how your husband responds.

First, learn to validate your own experience. When your husband tells you that you’re wrong about how something felt, remind yourself: “I am the expert on my own experience. I know how that felt for me, and my feelings are valid.” You might even say this out loud: “I understand you didn’t intend to hurt me, but I’m the one who gets to decide how something felt to me.”

Second, don’t take responsibility for managing his ego. It’s not your job to protect your husband from the discomfort of growth. If he gets defensive when you share your truth, that’s his work to do, not yours to avoid.

I remember working with a woman named Patricia who had been tiptoeing around her husband’s defensiveness for years. She’d learned to phrase everything so carefully, to pile on so many compliments and reassurances, that her actual concerns got lost. When she finally learned to speak her truth directly and kindly, without managing his emotional response, their marriage transformed.

Third, stay present during these conversations. Don’t let his defensiveness shut you down or make you retreat. You might say something like, “I can see this is hard for you to hear, and I love you for that. And I also need you to know that this is my experience, and I need you to hear it.”

The Beautiful Truth

Here’s what I’ve learned from working with hundreds of couples: The men who can handle their wives’ truth without getting defensive? Those are the ones who end up with the deepest, most passionate marriages. Because when a woman feels truly seen and heard by her husband – not just in the easy moments, but especially in the difficult ones – that’s when real intimacy flourishes.

The beautiful irony is that these “good guys” who are so afraid of not being good enough? When they finally stop defending their goodness and start demonstrating it by truly listening to their wives, they become the exceptional husbands they were always trying to be.

Your wife’s truth – even when it’s uncomfortable – is a gift. It’s her way of inviting you deeper into the marriage, deeper into connection, deeper into the kind of love that transforms both of you.

So husbands, the next time your wife shares something difficult with you, instead of thinking “I need to convince her she’s wrong about this” ask “How can I love her better?” That’s the question that changes everything.

Remember, love is a journey, not a destination. Stay committed, stay passionate, and stay connected. I’ll see you next week…ba-bye.