One Of Us Keeps Saying It Does Not Matter

He has said it about fifteen times.

It does not matter. It really does not. They are all fine. Whatever you think.

And then he goes quiet when a particular one comes up. And once he said, half under his breath, not that one, and then said, no, it is fine, honestly, before anybody could ask.

And there was an evening in September when she said a name and he did not answer for a beat too long, and then said, sure.

I have lived long enough to know what that is, and it is not a man with no opinion. I wrote about that man on another page on this site, and he is real and he exists and he is not this one.

This is a man with a strong opinion who has decided that having one would be trouble.

And that decision, wherever it came from, has put his wife in an impossible position. She cannot argue with him, because he has not made a claim. She cannot ask him, because he has already answered fifteen times. And she cannot ignore the evidence in front of her, because she has been married to him for nine years and she can read his face across a room.

So she is standing in a house with a disagreement in it that officially does not exist.

That is a lonely place and I want to be plain about how hard it is, because everybody around her thinks she has an easy husband.

Open rebuke is better than secret love

There is a proverb about the two ways a thing can be held, and it is bracing in the best sense.

Open rebuke is better than secret love. (Proverbs 27:5, King James Version)

You are in a house where the love is real and it is being kept secret, and Proverbs 27:5 has never once preferred the quiet version. The written word puts the open thing above the hidden one plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a comfort rather than a stick.

That verse is not about being harsh, whatever it sounds like at first. It is about what a person can actually work with.

Something said out loud, even something unwelcome, can be answered, and adjusted, and lived with. Something held quietly cannot be touched at all, however loving the reason for holding it.

And the loving reason is the whole point of the proverb. Secret love. Not secret spite. It is describing exactly this man: somebody keeping something back out of care, and the verse says plainly that the open version would be better.

You have been living with a kindness that cannot be answered, and Scripture prefers the open thing to the kept one. The Spirit of God is what makes a house able to bear an opinion out loud, and Proverbs 27 says it in seven words.

Why he decided not to have one

Now let me say something about him, because he is being kind and it is not working, and there is nearly always a history behind it.

A man who has decided that having a preference is dangerous learned that somewhere. Often at home, in a house where somebody's opinions arrived with weather attached and everybody spent years managing them. And he decided, at about fourteen, never to be that.

So he has built a whole way of being where he wants nothing much, out loud, ever, and he genuinely believes this is what a good husband looks like.

You are married to a man protecting you from something you have never seen, and no verse anywhere made a hidden preference into a kindness. Proverbs 27:5 sets the open above the secret, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man that his defense has stopped defending anybody.

And here is the cost, which he has never counted, and which is worth counting.

Every time he says it does not matter, and then minds, his wife learns something small: that what she sees is not to be trusted, and that this house does not run on what is actually true.

That is a large cost for a small kindness, and he has been paying it in a currency he did not know he was spending.

You are able to see the cost without accusing anybody, and Scripture puts the open rebuke above the secret love because of what it makes possible. Proverbs 27 chooses the workable over the comfortable, and the Spirit of God is what makes an honest room feel safe rather than dangerous.

Three each, and no discussion

So here is the assignment on this row, and it is the only thing I know of that gets past this particular defense.

Each of you write three names down separately, then read all six out loud once.

Writing three is not having an opinion. That is the whole trick of it, and it is not a trick played on him, it is a way around a thing that is in his own way.

An opinion is a claim, and a claim can be argued with, and that is what he has spent his life avoiding. A list of three is a task. Nobody argues with a task. He can put three words on a piece of paper without ever having asserted anything at all.

You are asking for something that costs him nothing, and Proverbs 27:5 has never once required a confrontation before an open thing could appear. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a preference arrive without a claim attached, and the written word prefers what is said to what is held.

And the rule about no reactions matters especially here. If his three are read out and anybody responds fast, he will discover that having a preference has weather attached after all, and the whole thing will close for another nine years.

Six read out, flat, all of them, and then a pause, and then something else entirely.

You are able to make it safe for him to want something, and Scripture calls the open version better without calling the hidden one wicked. Proverbs 27 puts the two side by side, and the Spirit of God is with two people reading six words at a kitchen table tonight.