Why Men Don’t Change: A Response

A few months ago, someone sent me a link to this article and asked me what I thought. This is my response.

There were a couple of good things and one or two Biblically accurate things in this article. They mentioned that sin started in the Garden that sin is sinful and most important for our purposes, that women can’t change their men.

Three main things jumped out at me. First, “functional fixedness” on which the whole article was based, is not a Biblical term. The author equated it with “what the Bible calls being ‘stiff-necked’ people or ‘darkened in their own thinking,’ even ‘hard-hearted.’” If the problem is hard-heartedness and stiff-neckedness, why don’t we just use those terms instead of something that come with all sorts of psychological baggage?

“Functional fixedness” comes from Gestalt psychology. Functional fixedness is “a form of cognitive bias in which a person is unable to think of other, more creative uses for an object aside from its traditional use.” For example, a person might want to hang a picture. He has a nail, a wall, and a picture, but no hammer. If he has a problem with functional fixedness he won’t be able to use anything but a hammer to hang the picture. Even though he has other things at hand that might function as a hammer, a wrench, brick, pan, etc. he is stuck and can’t get the job done.

The interesting thing about this is that the more I do research on functional fixedness, the less I understand how the author of the article is using the term.

Maybe it has something to do with the roots, Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology teaches that people function as a result of all their gestalts (perceptions) working together. “Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world.” “The idea of gestalt has its roots in theories by David Hume, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Immanuel Kant, David Hartley, and Ernst Mach.” I left the links on these names in case you want to research who these folks are.

Second, either way, even if we don’t try to figure out what the term means apart from the article. The article uses it to somehow show that men do what they do, or don’t do what they don’t do because they are trying to avoid pain. For the author, that seems to be the primary motivator for both men and women. They said, “For change to occur, he has to feel his own discomfort.” And, “Remember, with such men it’s not your pain that motivates him, it’s his pain.” I’m sure pain is a motivator in how people make decisions, but what does the Bible say about why people choose to do what they do, or not to do what they don’t want to do?

The first sin: The Bible said, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate” (Gen 3:6). No pain avoidance here. Only desires for something. How about the second sin? “And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell” (Gen 4:5). Pain avoidance? Nope. More desires for something. What about the third sin? Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen 6:5). Pain avoidance? Nope again. Rampant desires. This seems to fit pretty well with James 4, doesn’t it? “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask” (Jas 4:1–2).

The Bible tells us that we sin because we want what we want, and we want things that aren’t given to us by God, or we don’t want things that we have been given by God. At the core, we want to be God and say what should be ours and what shouldn’t be ours.

So, right off the bat, the article is wrong about the source of the problem. Men do what they do because they want what they want. They have desires, and either aren’t getting what they desire, or they have desires to not have something and they are getting it anyway.

It isn’t about pain or pain avoidance except as it touches on what people want or expect. It is true that in this context people want to avoid pain, so that avoidance is a motivator. But the desire to have “not pain” is really the point. According to the Bible, we are motivated by what our hearts want rather than what our hearts don’t want.

Third, because the author gets the main problem wrong, and for unbiblical reasons, his counsel for how to proceed can’t be right or good. He said, “If what he’s doing is working for him, why change? He needs a compelling reason to change and it needs to be more compelling than your unhappiness or private misery with the situation.” So, “You have to be willing to create an environment in which the status quo becomes more painful than positive change…”

The good thing was that at some point the article said that a woman can’t change a man, but the whole rest of the article was either talking about making his pain painful enough to change or giving counsel about how to suggest various things she can do to get him to change.

The Bible says that when a husband is not “obeying the word” his wife needs to do what God has called her to do. Which is essentially to pursue holiness. She needs to stop worrying about him and what he is doing and focus on her own walk with God. Instead of yammering at him (nagging), correcting him, fixing him, trying to convict him of his sin, trying to explain what’s wrong with him and everything around him, and making is pain painful enough to motivate him to do what she wants, she should draw near to God (Jas 4:8) by submitting to her husband without a word, and showing him her obedience by living a chaste and respectful life in front of him (1 Pet 3:1-6). Then God will enact change in her husband. He will be won without a word. Read 1 Peter 3:1-6 and do what it says.

The world tells women to stand up for their rights. The world tells women that their men are avoiding pain, so make their pain unbearable. If women follow this advice, which they are doing naturally according to the flesh, they will get more of what they already have, not less. If you or any wife follow the counsel of the article, because it is not Biblical from top to bottom, the husband and the family situation will almost always get worse.

The one thing the article got right is that a woman can’t change a man. Other than that, it was very unbiblical and pagan. And because it claims to be Christian, it is dangerous because it leads to another God.

One more comment: if you have been walking with God, doing what I have suggested, and God has not seen fit to enter into changing your husband’s life, I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t take your concerns to your church leaders. I don’t see this as disrespecting your husband unless as you go, you disrespect him in the reporting. The elders should, with wisdom (Pro 18:17) discuss the situation with your husband in a way that does not cause him to react to you in a negative way. At the same time, if your husband is a real piece of work and reacts badly to the elders’ discussions, you might need to (with the elders backing) separate yourself from your husband for a time and, depending on church discipline be preparing to divorce him. Finally, if your elders’ hands are tied because it is your word against your husband’s, you need to read this blog post.