MENCOURAGEM SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED...

WRITER: RICHARD BURGUET

Admit it! You don’t like to do it either! Your wife convinces you that your home will never be complete without that special piece of furniture at the Swedish furniture store. The only problem is it comes in a box that is too heavy for you to carry by yourself, and tucked deep inside the cardboard and Styrofoam packaging is a little plastic bag filled with nuts and bolts, an Allen wrench, and the all-important instruction sheet. You really don’t like to read those sheets, and you sure don’t think you need it!

I suspect I could have added at least three years to my life expectancy if I had only read the whole instruction sheet before joining part L-94 to P-27 with the hex-ended, super-spinner support brace. I mean, after all, it looked right from the picture.

So the reality is men don’t like reading instructions. We don’t especially like looking at maps or asking for directions. Not only that, we never read those warning boxes that pop up on our computer screens giving us the choices of OK or cancel, and we won’t go to a counselor or pastor for relationship or marriage advice unless we are coerced.

Here is the problem: we picture ourselves as the “quintessential problem-solver.” To ask for help or advice seems to many of us as a failure to be the rescuer, fixer, and all-around knight in shining armor we envision ourselves to be. I am afraid even though we have been hardwired by the influences of our age to think of ourselves like this, we are missing a huge benefit by not seeking good counsel. We think it makes us look weak or helpless to ask for solid advice or instructions, and the reality is when we don’t, our lives end up looking like the Swedish furniture that I botched by not reading the manual. It’s not pretty!

The sad truth of the matter is many men will not seek help until things have reached the tipping point. More times than I can count, men come into my office seeking counsel after their wives have started separation or divorce procedures, and they want to meet once or twice, get a list of 10 things to do, and have their issues resolved. Life and relationships simply do not work that way. Too many of us have the mentality that relationships can be helped and healed the same way a physician prescribes a medication: “Take two of these pills daily for 14 days and the infection will be gone.”

We men might do better with the whole idea of counseling and relationship advice if we simply re-named what we call it. If we simply re-name it “coaching,” most of us can get our heads around that. There is nothing weak or helpless about being coached. I played college soccer on a team that went to the regional finals many years ago. It was the very first college soccer team Belhaven College (now a university) ever had. We started as a group of young men who loved the sport and decided to form a team. We had no uniforms, no schedules, no fitness regimen, no cheerleaders, and worst of all, no coach. We would have remained simply a group of guys who liked to play soccer without coaching. But with our coach and his advice, we were able to excel and take second place in our region in three short years. Sometimes his advice was gentle; sometimes his counsel was harsh and demanding; other times it was simply encouragement and applause.

Gentlemen, we need to be willing to seek and follow good coaching in our relationships and stop thinking of it as a weakness. It is a sign of wisdom and courage to seek the advice of others who have the answers we need. If it is true that men and women are from distinct planets — men from Mars and women from Venus — and each gender is acclimated to its own planet’s society and customs, but not to those of the other, we really do need to see the manliness of seeking out good coaches. The wisdom of these words stand as true today as they did when they were penned long ago: “Through presumption comes nothing but strife, but with those who receive counsel is wisdom.”

Change the word counsel to coaching, and you have got it!