Cooperation is another basic need of all people, though it is more obvious in girls and women than men. Men have a greater tendency to compete, even among friends, which almost seems to imply a lack of cooperation. But even in competition, the boys learn to agree on the rules and to abide by them, like it or not, and that is a form of cooperation.
Between spouses, husbands and wives want to know that their partner is on their side. If one partner turns on the other at a moment of crisis, cooperation is broken. Unfortunately, though women are generally better at cooperation than men, women are also better at betraying the partnership as well. For whatever the reason, women seems to have learned to criticize men and maleness, even perfectly normal male behavior that has a strong probability of being tied to genetics. Often, when women get together, they will complain about men. Even married women who love their spouses and claim to want a powerful, loving relationship with their man will still complain about their husbands to other women. To a man, this is a betrayal of the partnership. It causes her to come home from her lunch with the ladies, and she will have spent the time reifying, making more real in her heart, the worst things about him.
That is part of why some men dread the prospect of women getting together to talk. They know that men are likely to be a topic, and when men are discussed the conversation is likely to be negative. One friend, Mariellen, said that she was at a gathering of women who did just that. One of the women complained angrily at some infuriating thing her husband did, and Mariellen suddenly realized that her own husband did the same thing. Then she started to feel angry about it. Fortunately, she caught herself. She reminded herself that she wan’t upset about it before, so why should she be upset now must because this other person was upset about the issue. It took an act of Will to set aside the emotion, and if Mariellen hadn’t developed that skill, she would have gone home angry with her husband about something that had never bothered her before.
Teamwork is how things get done most effectively. My wife and I make and excellent team. As previously discussed, she does what she can do to free me up to do those things only I can do. Without her help, support and diligent work to do all the maintenance things in life, I could not do what I do. That’s cooperation.
At a whole different level of cooperation, we each have different perspectives. I have an entreprenuer, dreamer, visionary outlook. I am the optimist who sees the possibilities. She has a manager, maintainer, sustainer outlook. She is the realist who sees the downside risks and possibilities. Without her, I would do things at the school that would look great, but it would be ruined, broken or someone would get hurt or offended. Without me, she wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t necessary or already proven. Together, we get some parts of the vision realized in a way that protects the investment and others. That is a result neither of us could achieve on our own, and we respect the role of the other on our team.
As an example, Christmas is a big deal to me, and when we got a Christmas village, I wanted to display it at the school. My wife does an incredible Christmas village display at home, and I wanted something similar with our new village for the school. At home, we elevate the tree and put the village underneath. The gifts are gathered in a wide arc around the back of the village. It really looks magnificent, and I can sit for hours and just experience the beauty of her creation.
However, she quickly pointed out that if we did the same thing at the school, it would get stepped on, fallen on, played with and, very soon, broken. When it broke, someone could get hurt. Without her awareness of those facts, I would have gone ahead with the village.
She was right, of course, but I still wanted my village. Her natural inclination was to skip the village and stick with the tree alone. Since she respected my role on the team as the visionary, we discussed it until we found a way to get me my village and responsibly address her very valid concerns. The village was set up, but not under the tree. It was set up behind the couch in the parent lounge so that it could not be accidentally broken while students trained or played, and children would have go through parents to play with it in the lounge. The teamwork produced a result that would not have have been possible with just one of us doing it.
Sometimes my wife and I are on the same team by working alongside each other, doing the same thing at the same time together. We do that when we do yardwork or teach. Sometimes we’re on the same team by one of us doing work that supports or facilitates the work of the other, such as when she brings be ice cold water or snacks when I building something that only takes one person, or I get her all the pieces for the village so she can set it up. Sometimes we’re on the same team by working together on a task, but doing different parts, such as the problem solving of the village at the school, or when I’m leading a class while she helps individual students. Sometimes we’re on the same team with as simple a teamwork as one of us giving the other the freedom to do what they need to do.
These are the many different forms of cooperation. We have each settled into our roles and learned to anticipate one another so we function well as a unit. It is not a matter that the quarter back is more important than the receiver. A pass won’t happen if one of them doesn’t do their job. What it takes for the classic long bomb, the sixty yard pass downfield, is both a skilled quarterback with a good arm and a team providing excellent defense, and a fast receiver with good hands. My wife and I are a lot like that. We’ve divided many of our tasks along traditional gender lines, using those as a default, and expanded and modified the list according to what needs to be done and our particular skill sets.
Husbands and wives want to feel their partner will back them up, support them, help them, and make efforts to make life easier. This principle will be addressed in some more detail when we discuss Biblical commands about marriage, but for sake of illustration, we will discuss part of it here
Husbands are commanded to love their wives in Ephesians 5:25-28. The word used here is agape, the kind of love discussed at length in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. In fact, Christ’s love for the church is the example used for how a husband should love his wife. Christians don’t make it easy for God to love us, considering all the horrible things that have been done in his name, the hypocrisy, ignoring or distorting the Bible and such. Fortunately, God has infinite love, so He manages just fine. Thus the Bible says that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
However, despite the fact that husbands are to use the love the Christ had for the Church as their standard for loving their wives, giving themselves for her, becoming something they were not (God became a man) for her, and providing for her, men are not God. Because of that, they need help. The man’s success at loving his wife with a complete agape love is part up to the growth in his character, and part up to how lovable his wife makes herself.
The Bible says that love is patient. However, while God may have infinite patience, men do not. So wives can cooperate with their husbands by not trying their husbands patience. Wives can make it easier for husbands to be kind, thanking and supporting their husbands in their kindness to help them better obey God. This can be applied throughout the qualities of agape love. His obedience to God’s command that he is to love her is not just a command he has to follow, but it becomes a team effort. She helps him obey. She does not make it difficult.
Likewise, God has commanded my wife to submit to me. If I am overbearing, if I am a commander (“you go do what I say!”) rather than a leader (“follow my example”), if I constantly issue orders, if I fail to explain myself, if I am insenstive or cruel, then I sabotage my wife’s ability to do what God told her to do. Rather, just as my wife makes if incredibly easy for me to obey God’s command to love her.
I make it easy for her to obey God’s command to submit to me. I respect her. I offer leadership by example, showing submission to God as a model for her submission to me, and showing respect for seniors, my pastor, and other authority figures so she can follow my own submission as a model for hers. I love her and she knows she can trust that my choices and decisions fully involve her and are considerate of her. I explain myself when she does not understand. All these behaviors on my part make her obedience to God easy. Her obedience to what God had told her to do is not just her obeying God’s command despite me, but a team effort that produces incredible results.
Cooperation is as simple as two people undertaking efforts to produce a commonly desired goal. If we both want to obey God, then we work together to help one another obey God. If we both want financial success, then we should both work together to produce financial success. If we both want a loving relationship, then we should both work together to produce a loving relationship. Exactly how that manifests may vary from couple to couple, but the simple idea that a husband and wife work together is practiced, side by side in similar roles, supporting one another in different roles, making the role of the other easier, or just allowing freedom to the partner to do their job.
Remember that the essence of committment to the relationship and the other person has to do with not tearing your partner down. The comments on being a team, a partnership, discussed there apply equally here.