It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
I saw this beautiful video recently, and I think it speaks for itself. Just watch it, and then tell me: how is your husband beautifully imperfect?
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up! I've been running some guest posts for Wifey Wednesday this summer as I've been taking some vacation, and today I'm thrilled to welcome my friend Julie Sibert, from Intimacy in Marriage.
I told my 6-year-old that daddy and I would be going on a date the next day. I asked him, "Do you know what a date is?"
Our son smiled and said, "Yeah, that's when a mommy and daddy get together and kiss."
His innocent explanation made me feel good not only as a wife, but also as a parent. For all of my missteps as a mom (trust me – there are pa-lenty), I at some point managed to convey to my child that my alone time with his dad was positive.
I know many of you may be thinking, "Time alone as couple? What's that?!"
If you are like a lot of married folk, the moment you walked in the door with your first baby, your quality time as a couple was on its way out.
And what about sex?
In many marriages, sex takes such a long hiatus that little or no sex becomes the status quo. But sex does matter in a marriage. At least it should.
Here are three reasons to ponder, especially if you are still in the midst of raising kids:
1. Sex keeps "mommy martyrdom" at bay.
None of us really likes to admit we are even susceptible to mommy martyrdom. We vow we won't be one of those moms who finds her entire identity wrapped up in her kids. Then we become a mom.
Before long, as we are schlepping juice boxes onto the grocery checkout belt, the housekeeping magazines taunt us. They scream at us with their insanely creative cupcakes and their impeccably decorated (and clean!) family rooms.
Never mind that no one we have ever known has a house that looks like the inside spread of Good Housekeeping. Common sense tells us that such lofty ambitions are highly improbable. But we still get sucked in.
We fall victim to the lie that homemade snacks for every school event, picture-perfect holidays and $8,000 swing sets are what make someone a good mom.
What your kids need more than perfectly organized sock drawers and flawless birthday parties is a mom who is in love with their dad. Nurtured sexual intimacy with your spouse is one of the best things you can do for your kids.
They may never thank you for the ways you make your marriage a priority – they may even roll their eyes when you give your husband a playful peck on the lips – but deep down, they hunger for that kind of security (which can't be replicated in a homemade batch of cookies).
2. Sex is one way to show you meant what you said at the altar.
I don't want to be one of those people who oversimplifies something by eloquently quoting scripture (because people like that annoy me).
I do, though, believe that we too easily forget that what makes marriage different from other relationships is that God established it as a covenant. We get caught up in the feeling that fills the air when a bride and groom speak their marriage vows.
But promises of one flesh were never meant to find their footing in a feeling. Within those promises are huge spiritual, emotional and physical implications that require of us the deepest commitment and afford us the greatest of rewards.
God never refers to sex as optional for married couples. If anything, He goes to great lengths to expound on what a gift it is for a married couple to enjoy often.
Long after your guests have eaten all the wedding cake and your wedding album is gathering dust on the bookshelf, what you live within daily is the covenant of marriage. You don't live in the wedding. You live in the covenant.
Sex is part of that covenant. When you make love to your husband, you once again are saying, "I still choose you."
3. Sex is a great stress reliever.
As a mom, your days are consumed with stepping on Legos, getting formula stains out of clothing and taming an overstuffed calendar. Do you really want to spend your nights that way too?
You need a break girlfriend.
I can hear you lamenting right now, "I know! I want my break to be sleep, not sex."
Certainly I recognize that if you are in the throes of parenting, you may be craving a good night's sleep more than anything else. Sleep seems like the only thing that will help you gain your bearings.
But don't bench sex quite yet. It still has a place on the playing field when it comes to keeping you and your husband on the same page and boosting your general well being. Some day those kiddos are going to grow up and move away. Don't you want to arrive at that point with a spouse you still know and a marriage you still treasure?
No matter where you are in your parenting journey, make the intentional effort to carve out time for sex. The more you relax and allow yourself to enjoy sexual pleasure with your husband, the more likely you will be to make it a priority.
Truth be told, an orgasm is one of the best stress relievers around. Remember how great orgasm feels? (If not, check out this post by Sheila Gregoire over on my site).
Certainly there are more than three reasons that sex matters in marriage. But if you are a mom struggling with nurturing this aspect of your marriage, these three are a good place to start.
Julie Sibert writes and speaks on sexual intimacy in marriage. You can follow her blog at www.IntimacyInMarriage.com. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband, their two boys and one German Shorthair Pointer dog who refuses to stay in the fence.
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
Too many of us allow us to become doormats in our marriages.
I sometimes read Dalrock's blog on marriage. He's not writing from a Christian point of view, but he is very interested in marriage and in keeping marriages together, and as such he frequently comments on how today's culture works to undermine marriage.
In particular, he highlights how often women become "unhappy" because they expect men to meet all of their needs. In one recent post, he was commenting on a study of marriages where women felt this way. He quotes the research:
Langley reports that she interviewed just two men who responded effectively to the challenge of their wives’ disloyalty.
The first man took the initiative and filed for divorce after his wife expressed on several occasions that she was unhappy and considering a separation. Before the divorce was final, his wife was trying to reconcile, but he chose not to because of her [lack of interest] in working on the marriage prior to his filing for divorce.
The second case was a man in a second marriage who had made all the usual mistakes the first time around but, unlike most husbands, managed to learn from the experience. As soon as his second wife started talking about a vague “unhappiness,” he inferred that she had met another man. He put down in writing clear conditions for remaining married to her and refused to agree to any separation, knowing it would only be a prelude to divorce. Insisting she break off her extramarital affair at once, he wrote: “I will not allow my spirit to deteriorate because of your indecision.” Rather than attempting to remove all possible grounds for his wife’s discontent, he simply told her: “complaining is no longer acceptable. If you want me to do or not do something, you must tell me what it is. I do not expect you to read my mind and I will no longer try to read yours.” This worked.
I find this second case very interesting, though I don't think it matters whether it's the wife or it's the husband who is unhappy. The principles are the same.
I know several women whose husbands are unhappy in marriage. Their husbands blame the wives for everything, but are unwilling to do anything to grow the marriage (date nights, counseling, even just communicating). They won't tell their wives what the real issue is.
The wives are so petrified the husbands will leave that they turn themselves inside out to try to make sure that there is nothing in their behaviour that the husband could object to.
Now, I have spoken at length in this blog about how you have to learn to show your spouse love in their language, and how we need to make sure that we are loving our spouses, even if they are not showing us love. But that does not mean that I think we should be doormats or lose our self-respect.
My mother, for instance, when she was married allowed herself to get walked all over, and tolerated really horrible behaviour on the part of my dad, because she was so scared of being left alone. And in the end, all that bending over backwards did absolutely nothing.
When you bend over backwards and try so hard to become what the other person wants, you cease being yourself. You're not looking to be what God wants you to be; you're looking to be what you think your husband wants you to be, and those are not necessarily the same thing. A truly intimate marriage relationship is based on two individuals who can cling to each other, confide in each other, talk to one another, and feel like partners. If you don't feel like your husband's partner, but instead feel like his maid or his slave or even his mother, then you're not building a good marriage. You're pushing him farther away from real intimacy.
James Dobson talked about this well in his book Love Must Be Tough. His central thesis was this: the whole way we do marriage counseling is backwards, because in the vast majority of troubled marriages, only one person is willing to work on things. The other doesn't care if they're hurting the spouse. They don't care how the spouse feels. They don't care what happens to the relationship, because they've become completely caught up in what they want.
So they're not going to go to counseling. So what do you do if you want to work on the relationship but your husband doesn't, and can't even admit there's a problem?
Dobson says you need to do have them feel the consequences of their actions, because that's the only way out of the selfish fantasy land they're in. They believe that they can keep daydreaming about leaving, and threatening to leave, and talk about being unhappy, because you'll sit there and take it and bend over backwards to try to satisfy them.
So stop bending over backwards, and show them what it will be like if they follow through and leave. Protect yourself and keep your self-respect, because a person cannot fall in love again with someone who has become a doormat and who no longer values herself.
And that's what the husband did in this example. He had already been burned by an ex-wife, so when the next wife starting talking about being unhappy, he said, "you either put up or shut up". If you want to work on the relationship, fine. But you can't just complain about it, because I won't live with someone who complains like that all the time. You need to commit. Commit, and we'll work on it together. Continue to hold out and say you're not sure and I'm making you unhappy and you need to test me, and that is not acceptable.
God hates divorce, but where Christians err is that we often think that the proper response then when a spouse starts talking about divorce is to try to do everything possible to appease that spouse. Appeasing, though, doesn't work, and can cause us to do things that God wouldn't want us to do. We may put up with things like affairs, or we stop respecting ourselves or our kids because we don't want to rock the boat. What we do need to do is to show proper love. Proper love always points people to God; inappropriate love allows people to act in an unChristlike manner. When we love inappropriately, by allowing people to walk all over us, we actually encourage them to go further from God. We need to show people that if they leave, life will be difficult, but they need to make a choice. We need to stop tolerating affairs, or pornography, or flirtations, or addictions, or things which will eventually ruin the marriage anyway. The best way to help your husband get over pornography is actually to not tolerate it.
If you're in this kind of a marriage, I'd recommend both Love Must Be Tough and Boundaries. Both books show what is your responsibility in a difficult relationship, and what is not. And remember: the best way to get positive change in a marriage is often through realistic consequences, not by becoming a doormat!
Now I know this is controversial, and I know there is a thin line between pushing someone away and calmly showing consequences. I know we are called to be gracious and to forgive, but I also don't believe we were called to tolerate indecision or evil. So if you have any pointers on how to walk that fine line, and do what's right, please leave a comment!
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up! Today's Wifey Wednesday is a guest post from Christine Hiester.
So says my husband. When I ask him what I can do to meet his needs, how I can better serve him, how I can improve as a wife, he simply chuckles and reminds me:
“I am simple. Keep me fed and give me lots of sex. And make it fun.”
Of course, he’s oversimplifying things a bit. He needs more than that, and we both know it. But as far as needs go, physical intimacy is so important to him that if that need is not met the whole of him is affected; and if it is met, that fulfillment trickles down to all other parts of his life.
I really think I have it easy in this marriage, to be honest. I mean, I am nowhere near simple. My husband has to deal with my moods, my insecurities, my lack of housekeeping prowess, my occasional emotional neediness, and all I have to do is be a willing and joyful participant in the bedroom and cook some good meals?
I asked my husband the other day to tell me why. I wanted him to help me understand the reasons behind this all-encompassing need of his, and be able to help other women in my life who may have struggles in this area. We have friends and relatives whose marriages have had rocky times due to intimacy issues and pornography. I wanted to know what advice he would have me give the wives.
“Are their husbands satisfied in the bedroom?” was his reply. “We men are bombarded at every corner: ads at an online news site, billboards, teens wearing skimpy clothing at church, TV commercials, magazine racks at the grocery store. We can’t help but be visual; it’s the way we are made. We want to be faithful and pure, but it is so hard in this environment. When you, as my wife, make sure that I am satisfied, I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. That’s what you can tell those women.”
That seems like a lot of pressure, but there is truth undergirding his response. Even more than just that answer, however, is the deeper issue of being accepted as a man with a high sex drive, and the subsequent affect on his emotional well-being. There is nothing wrong with our husbands wanting sex, and varied sex at that, often. Let me repeat that:
There is nothing wrong with our husbands wanting a lot of sex.
It is our own faulty thinking about God’s gift of sexual intimacy that is the hindrance. Men find emotional fulfillment in physical intimacy. Our rejection of them in the bedroom feels to them as their emotional rejection would feel to us. If you came to your husband in need of a listening ear, and an available shoulder when you were feeling down, and he said to you, “Not tonight, honey. I’m not in the mood to listen to you,” it would be devastating. Perhaps that is what happens on a regular basis for you. I’ve been there in my marriage.
We went through a period in our marriage when I agreed to be intimate when I felt emotionally full, only when my needs were met. I often begged off because I was feeling down, or we had had a fight, or he annoyed me in some way. It wasn’t a conscious decision to use sex as a reward to grant or withhold, but that’s what it felt like to my husband. He felt rejected, and thus wasn’t as open to me emotionally. The vicious cycle continued. I rejected him physically, he rejected me emotionally. I was miserable. He was miserable. The prayer of my heart was for God to change him. But God instead, in His wisdom, changed me.
When I, in obedience, made the choice, in recognition of this need in my husband, to be joyfully willing and available sexually whenever he requested it (and also initiating on a regular basis), the change in him was amazing. Over time he was more emotionally available to me, more able to cherish me, more sensitive to my needs.
It was a transformative choice on my part, and improved our marriage dramatically.
God blessed us, because I made the holy choice.
God is the one behind this need in our husbands, just as He is behind our sensitivities and emotional richness as women. There is a grand plan in marriage, and sex is an enormous part of that plan.
When your husband desires you, desire him back. Make a choice to accept, and not reject. It is deeply important to him. Simple? Maybe. They are simple beings, after all. Or so says my husband.
So what are you waiting for?
Christine is a joyfully-available wife, and homeschooling mom of four. She has a passion for seeing marriages thrive, and blogs about that, among other things, at http://www.fruitinseason.blogspot.com, and contributes to http://www.heartofthematteronline.com/.
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up! I'm taking the summer a little slowly, so I've asked Tammy Rhoden to guest post for us today. Here's Tammy's story:
As a Christian woman entering a marriage in which I was equally yoked, I expected to live happily ever after once the rings slipped over our fingers. I didn’t believe our marriage would be tainted by the worldly issues of non-believers. I knew there would be a few bumps in the road but overall I wasn’t worried. I thought God made marriage to bring happiness to believing men and women.
But it hasn't been perfect. Actually, there have been far more imperfect moments than not. There have been many heartbreaking moments as well. Moments when I cried out to God and asked Him how He had allowed me to make such an awful mistake! There have been times when I haven't known who I was madder with; Bobby, myself, or God. How had the marriage that I thought was the one every Christian woman was destined to have, turned so sour? Was I not good enough? Had I not paid enough? Would I never finish reaping the harvest of the bad past I had sown? Where was my happiness? I felt betrayed by my husband yes, but more so by God. I felt He had let me down.
I contemplated at times whether I should be able to get out of this marriage. I bargained on occasion with God trying to get Him to work on my behalf. Often I picked myself up by the proverbial bootstraps and got down to the business of saving my marriage. Never during any of these times did I find lasting happiness. Happiness was that elusive emotion that seemed to flit in and out of my marriage but I could never get a handle on so it would remain. What was wrong with us? We are Christians. Why weren't we happy?
Then slowly I began to see things differently. I'm not sure when but over time, I noticed I was changing. Previously, I bought in to the whole idea that seems rather prevalent in the Christian world, that when two believers marry, their marriage should be a good one. After all, if two people are professing to love God then it follows that two people want to please God by living as He directs. So, it's all good and they as Christians are destined to live happily ever after.
That really isn't always the case, though. We want marriage to be a union with another person that brings us happiness but the truth is, God's Word doesn't say that marriage is designed to bring us happiness. In fact it says that it will be an area of struggle and hardship. Genesis3:16 He told the Woman: "You'll want to please your husband, but he'll lord it over you."
At some point, I began to realize that I weighed almost every moment of my marriage on a happiness scale. Because there is no standard unit of happiness in marriage, I often found my scale too light. When I was feeling let down numerous times a day because my scales were always off, it only makes sense that my heart was beginning to develop defense tactics to keep from being hurt so often. As my heart began to harden, it became easier for the enemy to whisper more and more darkness into my ear.
As my heart grew harder and colder and wrapped itself tighter within layers of defensive repellent; I found it harder to respect my husband. When a wife doesn't respect her husband, she finds it hard to submit or to have sex, whether out of spite or lack of desire. When a husband feels emasculated and lonely, he uses emotional distance to cope. Things continue to feed off each other and spiral out of control until each spouse's heart is so hard they not only fall into further sin and treat each other more poorly, but they are no longer of use to God in many ways that they once were.
People tend to expect marriage to bring them happiness even though God never promised it would. Satan desires to harden the hearts of Christians so they aren't able to be used by God as He would like. Satan knows we use how our spouse makes us feel as a happiness gage and when we aren't happy, we begin to try to fix that. When we try to fix our spouse, we begin to have marital problems because our "fixing" stems from selfish desires and expectations of happiness that we believe our spouse should provide. As we criticize each other and try to change each other or begin to seek happiness outside our marriage, our hearts are hardened and become less usable by God for His ultimate purpose, which is to bring all things in the universe together under Christ.
Here's a thought: if Satan attacks married people first and foremost through their spouses, in order to render their hearts useless to God, doesn't it make sense that two strong believing Christians may have more problems within their marriage than non-believers?
Does this mean that I think Christians should just settle for a poor marriage if they are in one or that they shouldn't strive for their marriage to be all it can be? No! But I also think that we as Christians should begin taking seriously the role God intended us to play in this world. He expects us all to share the Gospel and to play large parts in bringing everything in the universe together under Christ. We often forget that and instead get caught up in thinking about our marital happiness. We need to remember that as well as pursuing happiness in our marriage, we need to pursue joy in Christ. This is how we find it possible to love our spouse with the agape love of Jesus, making us capable of fulfilling God's purpose.
I have begun to measure the moments of my marriage with a different tool. I no longer use my happiness scale but rather ask myself if the moment has done or is doing anything to further God's purpose. If I find that it has, I celebrate and thank God for His goodness and grace. If I find that it was lacking, then I look back through the lens of self-examination, held by the Holy Spirit and try to discover where I fell short. I try not to think about where Bobby may have fallen short because God uses us as individuals and we are accountable as individuals.
Since I have begun to make personal, heart changing, spiritual choices in the way I deal with my unhappiness, Bobby has begun to turn around a lot in areas he personally felt he needed to improve in. We have identified who our enemy really is and we know it's not each other.
Is everything hunky dory now? Well, things are still a work in progress and I think they may remain that way in one sense or another, maybe until death do us part. As for happiness; I can say that the joy I am experiencing more regularly in my life surpasses earthly happiness by far. Joy is what I have the most of but I am also happy more often than not as I am no longer feeling let down most of the time. My perspective of what marriage is supposed to offer me, has changed to align itself with a more godly vision and that makes a huge difference in the happiness scale!
Tammy Rhoden is a Christian Life Coach and Speaker. She offers one-on-one and group coaching as well as workshops, seminars, and lectures designed to support women in facilitating change in their lives that are in agreement with God's Word. Areas of support include but aren’t limited to marriage, children, career, finances, weight loss, setting boundaries, forgiveness, making friends, and time management. Please visit Tammy’s site, Jesus is My Host of Hope, to learn more about her, or find her on Facebook!
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up! I'm taking the summer a little easier these days, so I've asked Rob Thorpe of Huzband to guest post today, to let us in on men's minds.
I Corinthians 7:33-34 says, “one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his interests are divided. The woman who is unmarried, and the virgin, is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
Pleasing one’s spouse assumes you know what it takes to please them – you know their needs and are deliberate about trying to meet them. Husbands and wives both have needs, and they get way off base assuming their spouse has the same ones they do. Sadly, most wives today think their man only has one need….want to hazard a guess? Yes, he does have that need, and it is a God-given physical and emotional need. But today, let’s talk about another need he is much more reluctant to discuss.
Deep down inside your husband has the same basic needs that you do – spiritual, emotional and relational. His physical needs may get top billing, but God created him with deep needs in other areas. Truth is – he doesn’t usually know how to articulate them, or is embarrassed to do so.
You already know that women tend to be more emotionally open than men....and women are more comfortable with their emotions. But your husband has real emotional needs too. Women tend to see feelings and behavior as the same. They act on their feelings. If a woman is angry, she behaves in that way. If she is elated, it's expressed in her behavior. Usually a woman's behavior is an open window to her emotions. But most men are not that way. They tend to hide their emotions. Men tend to embrace the philosophy that says that real men control of their emotions. This was usually reinforced early in his life by his father, grandfather, teachers and coaches.
Truth is - men are very emotional...we can be deeply moved by movies, music and beauty! Like you, we also have a deep need both to love and feel loved. And the love that is most precious to us, other than God's love, is our wife’s love.
In Shaunti Feldhan’s great book, For Women Only, she reports the results of a large survey of husbands that were asked the question – “What is the primary thing you wish your wife knew?” The overwhelming response was – “How much I love her”.
Over several years of counseling and mentoring husbands, I have heard firsthand accounts of husbands saying things like - “I want her to know that I love her with all his heart and soul." Others have said repeatedly, I love it when she is happy and hate it when she is sad or hurting." We may not admit it to our friends, or even speak it to you – but, the love of our wife is critical to our survival!
In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl shared the account of his time in a concentration camp during World War II. He says that one particularly chilling night he and the other exhausted prisoners were forced to walk through snow to work the frozen ground with pickaxes until morning. Though few words were spoken, one of the emaciated men whispered, "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what's happening to us." Silence followed the man's remark, but Frankl writes, "...
each of us was thinking of his wife.....I looked at the sky where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved."
Next to an abiding faith in God, Frankl says the love of their wives gave men strength to rise from their crowded cots and face another pain-filled day. You see, contrary to popular opinion, men do have emotional needs....they need to feel loved by their wives if they are to go out and "slay the dragon" each Monday morning. We husbands may not face Nazi prison camps...but as Thoreau put it men live "...lives of quiet desperation" as we face the hopelessness and exhaustion and a hard-edged world week in and week out.
So wives, please look behind the facade. We desperately need a wife who loves us so well that the memory of your smiling face and the echo of her encouraging words will keep us going in the face of our daily adversity. We need you more than you know.
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
Last week on Wifey Wednesday I encouraged you all to have more sex! Use it or lose it, I said. When you have sex more, you actually charge your libido!
But then some of you commented, what do you do when it just doesn't feel good at all?
I posted a video about that. Watch it again here:
But let me offer some more encouragement today. First, for many women sex does not feel very good at the beginning of their marriages. In fact, based on the surveys I did for my upcoming book, The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex, it looks like most women have rather ho hum sex in their first few years of marriage. They don't reach orgasm. They don't like it that much.
That's because, as much as we may talk about sex being "totally natural", we don't just figure out how to do it easily. So many things are tied up in sex that making it work like clockwork isn't actually that easy. You have to feel safe. You have to feel relaxed. You have to feel willing and not ashamed. And that takes time to build up trust.
So just know that if you're in the first, let's say, 7 years of your marriage, and it still isn't working, it likely still will! Hold on to that!
The second thing is that I am totally convinced that most women do not know their own bodies. And men certainly don't! Men may "know", at a head level, that women need to be touched longer before they're ready for actual sex, but they don't necessarily know how to do that touching. Men and women like to be touched in entirely different ways. Men like it rougher; women like it much gentler. Most men, then, when they do try to touch, do it completely wrong.
And what's our response? We often don't tell them. We put up with it, because to ask for something else seems embarrassing, and if we're not getting aroused with what he's doing, then we figure there's something wrong with us.
But there's not! It's probably just that he doesn't know what to do, and he'd really, really like to learn. He may be rushing through it, so you may get the impression that "he really doesn't want to do this", but he's probably rushing through it because he doesn't understand the importance of foreplay and he doesn't understand how to touch you anyway, so what he's doing doesn't seem to be having much effect.
So, ladies, here's what it comes down to: if you are going to have a good time in the bedroom, you are going to have to be an active participant. Tell him what you want! He wants to make you feel good; for most men, that's the ultimate prize. When they know that they can make you feel good, they feel like real men. They feel wanted and desired. So he wants it to work, even if he's rushing through it. He just doesn't get it.
Here's a good way to make him get it: suggest that you play a game where all you do is touch for 15 minutes. Just have him touch you, and when he does something right, tell him. When it's not quite right, move his hand or lead him to some place better. You don't even need to use words if you don't want to. But show him what feels good, and in the process you'll probably learn yourself!
Believe that it can better, and take control of it. If you're one of those women who has just never felt that aroused, you probably have to do this a whole bunch of times to learn how to relax and just feel pleasure. But you can do it! So dare yourself, and maybe you'll find that you're one of those women who finally figures out what all the fuss is about--even if you're seven years into your marriage!
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
Men thrive on appreciation and admiration. They withdraw when they feel as if we don’t respect or value them.
1. Thank your husband once a day for something (try to make it something different each time) 2. Compliment your husband to your mother, your children, your friends, whatever, within earshot of your husband, every chance you get. 3. Do not nag. 4. Do not give the silent treatment. 5. Make love with relative frequency (say at least 2-3 times a week).
Those first two are better categorized as "respect" or "affirmation". They're part of that whole support thing that we owe our husbands. But how do we manage that support?
Many women feel, “well, I’d respect him if he deserved it”, but this can be a bit of a circular argument. When we respect him and value him, he is more likely to act in a manner that we would respect and value. When we fail to respect and value him, he is more likely to pull away. So waiting for him to change and withholding our respect is not going to help.
One of the best examples of respect and support I have seen recently is in the amazing movie, The King’s Speech. We tried to go see it the second Tuesday after it was open, and the 5:45 showing was sold out (even though it was over the dinner hour). So we went on a Sunday afternoon, and the theatre was still packed. The movie is doing so well. It makes me wonder why Hollywood doesn’t make more great movies that uphold our values. But that’s a subject for another blog post.
If you haven't seen it, watch the trailer:
What I want to talk about here is the marriage relationship between the two main characters: King George VI, and his wife Elizabeth, better known to us as “The Queen Mother”. The movie follows the true story of Bertie (King George VI’s real name was Albert) overcoming his stuttering as he is thrust into the role of king unexpectedly when his brother abdicates. The king must find his voice to inspire and rally Britain as the war opens. And, with the help of an unusual speech therapist, he does.
But it is his wife who I was really drawn to. Helena Bonham Carter plays her wonderfully, but I noticed two main things: she supported and encouraged him to find help, but she never once babied him or showed him anything other than, “I believe you can do it, and that’s all there is to it.”
She was very matter of fact about the whole thing. Before he went in to give a huge speech, she wouldn’t hold his hand and say, “don’t worry, Bertie, no matter what happens, I’m still here for you!” She gave him a quick kiss and said, “you’ll do great.” It was that simple.
And she told him, throughout the movie, why she admired him. He was a great man. He was a kind man. He was an honourable man. When he was ready to give up on speech therapy, she managed to make him keep going. When he quit, she managed to get him to start again. We don’t see all these conversations on screen, but I can imagine the way she handled them. She would say, “I see something wonderful in you. And I want others to see it, too.” When a therapist was ridiculous, she put a stop to it immediately because she didn’t want her husband to go through that. But she always believed in him, at his core.
I think there are two mistakes women make when it comes to supporting our husbands: the first is that we fail to do it at all. We notice all his inadequacies, and focus on those, rather than noticing what is good about him.
The second mistake is to baby him, to try to support him by constantly offering our “support”, but we phrase it in such a way that we could be talking to a 4-year-old. That doesn’t make him feel supported; that makes him feel like you think he’s a child who can’t handle this without you. That’s not real support; that’s pity. And he doesn’t want pity.
Let’s turn to lack of respect first. If you don’t support your husband because he doesn’t deserve it, you’ve got a huge problem. Your marriage is only going to get worse. It will collapse. You have to have an underpinning of respect in any marriage for it to work. And so I ask you: what did you respect about your husband when you first were married? What drew you to him? Those things are probably still there. Notice them again. Thank him for them. Draw them out. The more you talk about them and mention them, the bigger he will feel, and the more he will want to participate in the marriage.
Maybe he is doing things you disapprove of. Maybe he does spend too much time playing video games, or not enough time talking to the children. These things do need to be addressed. But they are far more likely to be constructively addressed in a relationship where you respect him and he feels it. If you start trying to fix him before giving him respect, he will withdraw and the relationship will become worse.
The woman I know who most radiates admiration is my pastor’s wife Marilyn. Every Sunday, she sits near the front of the church and looks at him, the whole time he’s speaking, with a huge smile on her face. She looks like she adores him—and she does. I often wonder, does my husband know I feel that way about him, too? Do I? No one can miss how she feels about him, and it makes all of us respect him more. If his wife feels that way about him, he must be pretty amazing!
But then there’s the other kind of encouragement—the kind when we think we’re affirming him, but we’re really giving him the message, “I don’t think you can handle this.” The Queen Mum (well, she was just Queen Elizabeth back then) always just patted his arm or gave him a quick kiss and said, “you can do it.” He felt that she believed in him (because she did).
Maybe your husband doesn’t stutter, but he might be out of work and worried if he’ll find another job. Or he may have a horrible one where people put him down. Do you treat him like a 4-year-old, or do you communicate, “I hear you, I want to listen, but I totally believe that you can handle this because you’re awesome.” He wants to know you think he’s awesome.
So give him the key to success. Admire and affirm him, but don’t treat him like he’s 4. That’s what a queen did, and it worked on her king.
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Have you ever had to confront your fantasies and throw them aside? How did you do it? Or do you have something else to tell us? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
Today I want to address a common meme in marriage literature: if you want to get your needs met, then meet your spouse's first. Figure out what his primary needs are, and meet them, and then you'll get your needs met!
Of course, as Terry noted earlier this week in her blog Breathing Grace, that's not really love. If you love just because you want to get something, you're ignoring 1 Corinthians 13 exhortation "love is not self-seeking". She explains:
In other words, our expressions of love should never be filtered through the lens of “What have you done for me lately?” or “I have needs, too.” My needs do matter, and it is perfectly acceptable for me to express my needs to those closest to me, but my responsibility to love selflessly remains constant whether I receive what I think I need or not.
Even so, though, there is truth to the addage that the more we care for others' needs, the more our own are met. The key here is motivation: if you care for someone's needs in order to get something in return it's manipulation, and they will sense it and it will backfire. If you care for someone's needs because you love them, then that love by itself will change the dynamics of your relationship, and you will be more likely to get your needs met.
But here's the central issue, girls, and I'm about to be very hard on our sex today: I think this works far better for us than it does for our husbands, because quite frankly too many of us don't consider their needs at all.
Let me give you an example. About a year or so ago my husband and I were just overwhelmed with busy-ness. I was speaking a lot, and he was working a lot, and we weren't connecting. Two nights in a row we didn't make love because I was preoccupied. Then I was away speaking. When I came home it was the middle of the night and we didn't, either. The next night I was still tired, but neither of us slept well because both of us were feeling that something was wrong in our relationship. The next night we did.
And then he bought me flowers.
Sex flowers.
I got mad. I interpreted it like this: "He wants me to make love more, so he'll reward me when we make love, and punish me when we don't. He'll be distant when we don't make love deliberately so that I will start putting out." And I got really frustrated.
And then it hit me: maybe the reason Keith bought me flowers was simply because he felt closer to me and lovey towards me. I thought what was going through his brain was this:
"I need to manipulate my wife into doing what I want."
What was really going through his head was this:
"I love my wife. I think I'll buy her flowers."
You see, my friends, men are really quite simple. They need two things: respect and sex. Just two things. Respect can be more easily defined as both affirmation and appreciation. When we affirm what they do and show them appreciation, they feel ten feet tall. When we make love to them, we affirm their manhood and they feel loved. And when they feel loved, they tend to feel less antsy, more compassionate, and more eager to keep pleasing us because they feel like the relationship is something they do well.
Men tend to want to put in effort in areas they feel they are good at. That's why if a man feels he's lousy at marriage he'll start working more, or playing on the computer more. He retreats to areas of competence. Make your man feel incompetent and irrelevant, and he'll retreat. It's as simple as that.
Now, of course, some men are louts, and it doesn't matter how much we try to please them, they're going to retreat and be insensitive. Absolutely. But I think the number of honest to goodness natural louts is far fewer than the number of men who currently ACT like louts. I think many men act like louts because that is how they have been treated.
Too many of us have virtually no respect for what a husband really needs, but we have unlimited respect for our own needs. And we're not only hurting our husbands--we're hurting ourselves.
Let me talk about another couple that's been married for 35 years now. I watch them every now and then, and while I know they're not splitting up, I don't see a lot of tenderness. She snipes at him and criticizes him every chance she gets, and he bristles and walks out of the room. Every now and then he retaliates, but not often. She isn't showing him that she appreciates him; she's showing him that she doesn't think he's good enough. He's always wrong. And it's no wonder that he doesn't act tenderly towards her!
If you take that same couple at year one of their marriage instead of year thirty-five, though, and his wife started thanking him for his contribution, and asking about his day, and making love to him with relative frequency, and respecting his opinion, I bet at thirty-five years they'd be a lot more affectionate and a lot more tender.
Men really aren't complicated. Do those two things: appreciate him and make love frequently, and you'll likely find that he starts being nicer to the kids. He helps with the dishes. He phones if he's going to be late. He feels competent and appreciated, and he wants to keep excelling in the family sphere because it's something he does well. Make him feel like he's not doing it well, and he will start to wither.
Why can't we just give to our men this way? Because we don't work that way. Remember the book "Sex Begins in the Kitchen" by Kevin Leman? I know it was written by a man, because only a man would think the sexual relationship was that straightforward. He's thinking the way men do, and then reversing the equation. When a man gets his primary needs met, he tends to reach out and start meeting a woman's needs. So Leman assumes that women act the same way: when we get our need for affection met, and when he starts helping around the house and caring about us, we'll start to make love more.
It's not true.
I've known many men who are saints at home and their wives aren't helping at all, because we tend to question men's motivations. We think either that they're trying to manipulate us, or we come up with other things they're doing wrong. Or, perhaps even more likely, we think to ourselves: "I'm glad he cares about me, because I work really hard. I need to take a break now so he can carry more of the load", and we don't think of returning the favour much at all.
Wewomen are far too focused on what is "right" and what is "fair". We're asking ourselves, how much did he care for the kids today? How much housework did he do? Did he let me talk? Did he care? And if the answer is no in any of these areas, we tend to hold it as our right to pull back from him until he improves.
We don't tend to feel all lovey dovey towards him when he does something right. We don't feel ten feet tall when he does the dishes or takes care of the kids. We simply think, "that's what he should have been doing anyway".
So the adage, "meet your spouse's needs, and they'll meet yours" has much more of a chance of working for women than it does for men. If you put yourself out and really show him appreciation and make love, he will, more than likely, become a different person over time. On the other hand, if he does the same thing, there is no guarantee that you will change, because we don't work the same way. What he needs is sex, and so many of us are so focused on being exhausted and not having time that we don't think that maybe, just maybe, we should consider his needs for a second. In our way of thinking, our husbands often impede on our ability to enjoy our life, what with all their demands, and frankly, they're far too much like animals, anyway.
And then women wonder why, fifteen years into marriage, their husband seems so distant and so insensitive.
Is it women's fault if men don't care about our feelings? If they don't help with the kids? No, it's not, because men are morally obligated to do these things anyway, whether or not we return the favour. But here's the thing: just because you can't be morally blamed for it does not mean that you could not have taken steps to make your marriage better.
Women, we have it so easy. We honestly have an easier deal with marriage than men do because men are so relatively simple (and I don't mean this in a derogatory way; we're just made differently). Give them appreciation and make love, and they will feel tenderly towards us. We, on the other hand, are far more complex, and we're not easy to figure out. Men actually have it harder.
I know this isn't popular to say. I know a lot of you are mad at me right now, and thinking what an idiot your husband is, and how I'm blaming you for not having sex with an idiot. I don't walk in your shoes, and it could be that your husband really is that horrible. But then, if you don't mind me asking, why did you marry him?
When you were dating, he probably was nice to you, and that was probably because he did feel ten feet tall. You appreciated him. You affirmed him. You "made out" with him and seemed so hot for him! Then you got married and he didn't feel like he had to woo you, but you also stopped with your affection, too. The difference is that you justify your behaviour; he often doesn't notice his. And as the months and years pass, your relationship takes on a different dynamic. Maybe the problem is not your husband, but the dynamic of your relationship.
You saw something nice in your husband once. I believe those attractive qualities can come out again. So, please, ladies, even if you don't believe what I'm saying, can I ask you to suspend your disbelief and try an experiment?
Commit for six weeks (it has to be a long enough period of time) to do the following things:
1. Thank your husband once a day for something (try to make it something different each time) 2. Compliment your husband to your mother, your children, your friends, whatever, within earshot of your husband, every chance you get. 3. Do not nag. 4. Do not give the silent treatment. 5. Make love with relative frequency (say at least 2-3 times a week).
At the end of six weeks, see if you feel differently towards your husband, and if he is acting differently towards you. I bet you will! Just the act of being nice to him will make you start thinking more nicely about him.
And as you make love more frequently, you will feel closer to him and you'll feel more goodwill, too.
I know you may not believe me, but so many marriages would be saved if we women would just learn how to love our men.
Will you try?
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Have you ever had to confront your fantasies and throw them aside? How did you do it? Or do you have something else to tell us? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post! Today I want to tackle a big, and rather personal, topic.
Do you ever feel like sex is about achieving a goal, rather than just enjoying each other?
That was something that often irked me when we were first married, before we really figured out how to get sex to work like clockwork. According to all the marriage books we had bought--even Christian ones--we were supposed to be able to figure out how to make sure that I achieved the "Big O". And when I didn't, we felt like we were failing.
So let's get honest here for a moment, ladies: how important is it that we actually achieve orgasm during intercourse?
Here's the real problem: When we decide that we want to, and when it becomes our goal everytime we make love, then everytime we're together we feel like we're being given a grade: you either pass or you fail. It adds a whole level of stress to sex that I'm not sure it was ever supposed to have.
Are orgasms great? Absolutely. But not all women experience them during intercourse, even those women who have been married a long time. And I really hate the thought that women are going to feel like they're somehow less than sexual, or somehow inadequate, if they don't.
Besides, as soon as you make it your goal to reach orgasm, it automatically becomes less likely that you will. As soon as you set the goal, you become just that little bit agitated. And in order to reach orgasm, you have to be able to let go and relax. The two things are working against each other.
Here's what I wish I had understood when we were first married, and here's what I'd like to give you as an encouragement today:
Orgasms are great, but they're easiest to achieve when you understand how your body works and how the different levels of arousal feel. It may be easier to understand that if you work for a while on achieving orgasm in different ways--through him touching you, for instance--rather than just through intercourse.
Once you understand that, you can then work on getting excited enough during foreplay that once you start making love, it's more likely you'll get to that "big O" because you started off pretty close.
But you don't have to achieve simultaneous orgasm to have good sex. You don't even need to achieve orgasm during sex to have good sex. You just have to enjoy being together, laugh, and have fun. If you can't laugh, you're too uptight and you're doing it wrong.
The more you laugh, and the more fun you have, the more you'll relax and the more your body will learn to respond. But stop thinking of your sex life as a series of individual sexual encounters, which have to be judged on their own merit, as either a pass or a fail. Think of your sex life as something which will be decades long, a journey of discovery, where you learn more about each other, grow more deeply in love, grow more intimate, and learn to let go. That's a process that takes a long time, and it's a destination you never really get to, because there is always more to learn.
Maybe if we saw sex as a journey, we'd focus less on whether we had an orgasm last night and more on whether or not we relaxed, had fun, and felt like we're getting to know each other better.
As you take that long-term view, you'll likely find that it's easier to enjoy yourself, because you know you don't have to reach a milestone right now, this minute. You're simply moving in a certain direction, and that direction is good.
Learn how your body works. Learn what feels good. But don't panic or feel inadequate if your body isn't responding exactly the way you want it to yet. Sometimes it takes time, and that's okay. That's what marriage is for! And if you stop stressing and do take that time, you might just find that you achieve that "Big O"--without necessarily even trying. This post was cross-posted at Adding Zest to your Nest.
Now, do you have anything to add? Just write your own Wifey Wednesday and use the Mcklinky to link up! Just post the URL of THAT post and we'll come on over and see what you have to say!
One quick thought: are you getting ready for bed soon? Looking forward to some sleep?
Here's a New Year's Resolution that will change your marriage (and ultimately give you more energy): Let's initiate in the bedroom! Instead of pulling back those covers and drifting off, why not reach for him?
Here's a post I wrote for Internet Cafe Devotions on that very subject. Give me a hearing and read it before you dismiss it out of hand. I really think it will help!
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
Have you ever heard the expression, “men are like microwaves, women are like slow cookers”?
It’s often uttered at marriage conferences, as if it’s very profound. Here’s what it means:
Men are like microwaves. They heat up quickly, and once they’re heated up, they’re really hot. Women, on the other hand, heat up very slowly. And they continue to cook, but very slowly. Then, by the time it’s all over, she’s really tender.
I don’t buy it.
Sure, there’s an element of truth to that, as every married woman will know. Men do tend to be “in the mood” almost instantaneously, if the thought crosses their mind. We women don’t work like microwaves at all.
But are we really slow cookers? To say that we are implies that we will, eventually, actually heat up. But we may not! The truth is that for us sex is primarily in our brains. We have to have our brains in gear for our bodies to follow. So it doesn’t really matter what he does to try to heat us up, we won’t heat up unless we also decide to. It’s a head thing.
You can really only say that women are like slow cookers if you also acknowledge that it’s women who control the switch. No one else can switch us on. It’s a decision that we make to enjoy this. And you all know what I mean. Have you ever been having a very good time with your husband when you realize all of a sudden that you don’t have milk in the fridge for breakfast in the morning? You start ticking off a mental grocery list in your head, and you’re gone! You’re not paying attention anymore, and your body follows into the abyss. Our heads need to be in the game for sex to work! That’s why, by the way, it’s often hard for a woman to a want to make love if she has a headache. The headache is a distraction, and when we’re distracted, we can’t concentrate. When we can’t concentrate, our bodies often don’t work right.
That’s not true for men. I remember soon after I was married my husband caught a horrible virus. He was in bed with a fever of 103 and a rash all over, and I crept into the bedroom. “Is there anything I can do for you?”, I whispered in sympathy.
That all too familiar look came over his face, and he smirked. “Well, since you asked…”
I thought to myself, “He is sick! In more ways than one!” But what I’ve come to realize is that this is how God made us differently, and He made us this way for a reason.
Men’s bodies are more tuned to desire sex quickly and to be able to perform right away (though obviously there can be problems, which we may deal with in another article in the future). If God also made women the same way, then what would our lives together look like? We’d likely be physically intimate extremely frequently, but there would be no impetus to actually talk to each other, or get to know each other on a much deeper level.
Women, on the other hand, were designed to desire relationship first. For us, sex comes out of our feeling of being loved. When we feel safe and secure, we want to make love. If God made both genders like this, we’d probably be physically intimate far less frequently, and we’d miss out on the profound beauty that comes when we’re intimate both spiritually and physically at the same time.
Men make love to feel loved, whereas women need to feel loved in order to make love. Our motivations are different, and our bodies respond differently. But it’s all so that both sexes have an incredible drive and need for each other that is expressed in slightly different ways. And that means that to get our primary need met, we have to meet each other’s primary need. We are forced to be selfless, generous, and giving in the marriage relationship.
That’s a good thing. So next time you’re wondering why your husband doesn’t want to talk and snuggle as much, and why he’s only interested in one thing, realize that he is not a lesser human being. It’s not that you are morally superior because you value relationship first; it’s that you are simply different, and that’s the way God made you.
And think about this: when you do make love, chances are he talks to you a lot more afterwards. He snuggles. And the next day his step seems lighter, and he’s more fun to be with. He’s all the things that you want, but it happens after you make love, not before.
Don’t concentrate so much on what you need; try to step out and give him what he needs, too. Think about sex in a positive way, where you’re “flipping the switch”, so to speak. Anticipate it. Enjoy it. Even initiate! (I think we'll talk about this next week.) Think about how great it’s going to be to be with your husband tonight. Don’t just get in bed and then wait for him to turn you on. Jump in and be enthusiastic about it! Most women, when they start to make love, aren't actually aroused yet. But once you start, your body follows if you make that mental decision to enjoy this. So just because you don't feel "in the mood" first doesn't mean you aren't. It just means that your body hasn't picked up your mental signals yet. When it does, you'll probably be fine. And if you do initiate, you’ll find that your own emotional needs for more connection will likely be fulfilled as well.
That’s how God made us. It works beautifully when we decide that we’re going to give to each other. So can you make that decision, even if you can think of all the things he’s doing wrong? Someone has to take that first step and decide to reach out. Can it be you today? Why not pray and ask God to make you thoroughly excited for your husband. Ask God to help you anticipate being with him tonight. And you just may find that you’ll heat up, after all!
This article first appeared in A Martha Heart last week, where I've been guest posting.
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Have you ever had to confront your fantasies and throw them aside? How did you do it? Or do you have something else to tell us? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
Every Wednesday on this blog we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you all comment either in the comments section, or by writing a post on your own blog and then linking up here!
Last Sunday Keith and I gave a sermon at a friend's church on communication. We opened with this quick video (less than a minute; you have to watch it):
You see? Communication matters. Too often we're not speaking each others' language.
And no where in that more evident than in the way we express love to one another. When Keith and I were first married, I said "I love you" to him several times a day, because that's what I wanted to hear. But Keith didn't want to know that I loved him; he wanted to know WHY I loved him. At first I was resentful that he didn't seem all lovey-dovey when I said it, the way I did when he said it. But then I clued in that we weren't really speaking the same language.
I learned to say, "You are such a compassionate man. You're going to make a great doctor." And I learned to say, "I love the way you read to the kids last night. They are so blessed to have you as their father."
Then, when we were walking through a valley in our marriage after our son died, and life was really tough, a counsellor suggested that we make lists of what the other person could do to show love to us. The rules?
1. They had to be small things that would take relatively little time. 2. They had to be free (or nearly free) 3. They had to have nothing to do with sex.
It's kind of along the lines of the Five Love Languages, but it was more specific, and the things were just small things. We wrote out about a dozen and then exchanged lists, and promised to try to do 1-2 a day, even when we were feeling blue.
A lot of mine were little; kiss me as soon as you come in the door, and don't go to the kids first. Tell me you love me. Do the dishes with me. It isn't hard to come up with things that mean a lot to you, but which aren't big deals.
And you can change the whole dynamic of your marriage if you just commit to doing these things every day. It's a way to say "I love you" even if you're suffering from depression, or grief, or hormones! It's a way to say that I value you even if you're walking through a difficult part of your marriage, trying to forgive a big thing. It's a way to show that you're still committed, even if things really aren't going that well right now.
And you'll find that as you do take these little steps, you start to feel better about him. You enjoy having someone to fuss over.
So why not make a date, sometime in the next two weeks, to sit down and write lists together? Make a game out of it! Exchange lists. And then commit to do those things.
Thirteen years after making our lists Keith still kisses me as soon as we walk in the door. And that's really special.
What about you? Do you have advice to keep your marriage strong? Leave a note in the comments, or write your own blog post and come and link back in the Mcklinky!
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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, she reports the results of a large survey of husbands that were asked the question – “What is the primary thing you wish your wife knew?” The overwhelming response was – “How much I love her”.
, Victor Frankl shared the account of his time in a concentration camp during World War II. He says that one particularly chilling night he and the other exhausted prisoners were forced to walk through snow to work the frozen ground with pickaxes until morning. Though few words were spoken, one of the emaciated men whispered, "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what's happening to us." Silence followed the man's remark, but Frankl writes, "...
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