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iQuestions Faculty, Barbara Rosberg 
 
 
Question: 
 
My husband has a tendency to be a workaholic. How can I confront 
him about this? 
 
Answer: 
 
Workaholism. What an unwanted visitor that moves in with both bags, 
fills the house, and moves your peace, your unity, and your oneness 
out. 
 
It was in the early ‘80s. Gary and I had been married a handful of 
years, and he was working fulltime on a doctorate degree in family 
counseling. He was also working 60-hours a week to bring in income 
to pay the bills and I was home, taking care of our two daughters. By 
the way, that’s where I wanted to be. But, those long days turned into 
long seasons. And, Gary and I will often tell couples that there are 
times we need to go through seasons, in order to pull our family 
through. But, when you boxcar seasons upon seasons, then eventually 
your marriage foundation is going to erode—and it will rust out, 
because you’re not building a foundation of strength, but you’re 
borrowing from it, in order to put everything else first. 
 
I will never forget this unwanted visitor of workaholism. And any “ism” 
in its purest form, is absolutely moving out what we long for in our 
marriage.  As we respond to our husbands, it’s interesting to me that 
whatever they fill their hearts up with, they have no idea how it 
impacts the marriage and the family. 
 
What I encourage you to do as a wife, as a responder, of a lover of 
your husband’s soul, is this: ask that God changes his heart. As a wife, 
 
there’s little that we can do or say that doesn’t sound confrontational. 
We want to build our homes on the foundation of tenderness, to create 
an environment where they long to come home. It’s a harbor of safety. 
It’s an environment of trust.  
 
I ask that you chose to be the lover of your own soul, and to 
experience self-control; self-control in what you do not say. Delete 
what you’d like to say, and chose words that will build up and draw 
your husband to you. You are not called to be his mama. You are 
called to be his wife. Those are two completely different roles.  
 
Be a lover of his soul. Be a place where he longs to be in the comfort 
of your arms, and don’t let any workaholic visitor take him into those 
kinds of arms. In fact, shoo that visitor out the door. That’s an 
unwanted visitor in your home. 
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