I Just Want Her to Be Happy

"What are you looking for?" the counselor asks the couple at their first session. The wife has a list of changes that she wants. The husband says, "I just want her to be happy." Why the difference between what she wants and he wants? More specifically, why does the husband apparently want so little?

Speaking cynically, "I just want her to be happy" could mean "I want her out of my hair with her misery. Doctor, doctor just make her stop."  If that were the case - and sometimes it is - we could assume that the husband wants little or nothing from the marriage, except for his wife's noisy unhappiness to stop - because he isn't really in the relationship. His concern is limited to securing peace and quiet for himself.

Another possibility: The husband long ago ceded the marriage to his wife. She can talk about feelings. She understands relationship. He is too relationship ignorant and incapable, he thinks, to have any legitimate wants or needs of his own. She is the important person here. He wouldn't think of trespassing on her domain; hence "I just want her to be happy."

And another possibility: Past experience with his wife has shown the husband  that it is simply not safe for him to have real needs of his own with her. He used to complain, he used to object - and got nowhere. His complaints were not legitimate. His needs were unfair or insulting to his wife. He was wrong - every time. So the husband stopped expressing his needs and, in fact, did his best not to have any.

The counselor working with this couple would need to support the husband in having needs of his own in the relationship and in expressing them. He would need to support the wife in respecting her husband's needs. He would need to honor the loneliness that they both had suffered. He would need to work with both spouses in finding common positive goals for their relationship - and in working together to realize them.